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DAVE MARSH
[ilHYPE RIO NI
NEW YORK
ISBN13 978-0-472-03023-1 (paper)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02523-7 (electronic)
The author gives grateful acknowledgment to the following for permission to quote from
copyrighted material: "Love You So," written by Ron Holden, copyright Golden Unlim-
ited Music (admin. Super Songs), copyright renewed, international copyright secured,
all rights reserved; "Do You Love Me," Berry Gordy, Jobete Music Co., Inc., June
1962; "Dirty Water" 1965 Equinox Music, c/o AVI Music Publishing Group, Inc.;
"Wild Thing" by Chip Taylor 1965 EMl Blackwood Music Inc. All rights reserved.
International copyright secured. Used by permission; "Spanish Castle Magic" ( 1968)
and "Castles Made of Sand" (I:> 1968) written by Jimi Hendrix/copyright Bella Godiva
Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission; "Brother Louie," words and music
by E. Brown and T. Wilson, copyright 1973 by Finchley Music Corp., rights adminis-
tered in the U. S. and Canada by All Nations Music, rights for the World excluding the
U. S. Canada administered by RAK Music Publishing Ltd., international copyright se-
cured, all rights reserved; Specified selection from "A Supermarket in California" from
Collected Poems by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright 1955 by Allen Ginsberg. Reprinted by
permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Dave Marsh
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission of the Publisher. Printed in
the United States of America. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth
Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marsh, Dave.
Louie Louie: the history and mythology of the world's most famous
rock 'n' roll song ... / Dave Marsh. - 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7868-8028-7
1. Rock music- United States-History and criticism. 2. Berry,
Richard, 1935- Louie Louie. 1. Title.
ML3534.M39 1993
782.42166-dc20 93-24725
Designed by Sandra Choron
Produced by March Tenth, Inc.
FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
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CIP
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For Richard Berry,
who gave birth to this unruly child,
and Rockin' Robin Roberts,
who first raised it to glory

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208
Irt.cU)L 239
Bob Miller stuck by the story of "Louie Louie" through two pub-
lishing houses, five years, and several long, dark nights. I'm
deeply grateful for his unyielding support, without which this
book would not exist. Equal gratitude must go to my agent, San-
dra Choron, who never gives up, and to my editor, Tom Miller,
who persevered through a process that must have seemed at
turns both incomprehensible and never-ending.
Greil Marcus shares my obsession with the song and encour-
aged me both early and late. So does Doc Pelzel, whose research
assistance and insights were as valuable as the discographical
material he and Jeffrey "Stretch" Riedle supplied. Eric Pre-
doehl's opening up of the FBI's "Louie" file is certainly the most
clever and creative use ever made of the Freedom of Information
Act in the service of rock'n'roll. His commitment to "Louie
Louie," best expressed in his forthcoming documentary film, ex-
tended to providing much of the graphic material contained
here. Invaluable research assistance was also provided by Keith
Abbott, Pat Baird at BMI, Harold Bronson, Art Chantry, Paul de
Baros, Scott Isler, Cub Koda, Steve Propes, Bob Rolontz, and
Joel Selvin. Bruce Springsteen very kindly made me feel like an
idiot for not spotting Boston's use of the "Louie" code sooner.
Thanks also to Karen Hall, for reading and advising me on the
early chapters. And if it weren't for Carol Green, I'd just stay
home.
If most of the principals in the "Louie" saga had not made
themselves available to me, there would be no book. My biggest
debts are owed to Richard Berry, Buck Ormsby, and Jack Ely,
each of whom gave me a great deal of himself in the course of
our interviews. I hope that the tremendous character each of
these men possesses comes through here. Thanks also to Rich
Dangel, Mr. and Mrs. Max Feirtag, Richard Foos, Arnie Gins-
burg, Ron Holden, Chuck Rubin, Marv Schlachter, and Gover-
nor Matt Welch.
It is customary to thank one's family for bearing up through
the horribly selfish processes involved in writing a book. Barbara
Carr, my wife, always handles this well. My elder daughter,
Sasha, escaped all the nastiness this time by going off to college,
then moving to Mexico. But on this project, my main supporter
at home proved to be my younger daughter, Kristen Ann Carr,
who unfailingly asked each day, "Did you get any work done?"
It troubles my heart to know that she will never read these pages,
but yes, sweetheart, and I'm finally finished with this one.
1
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et's get straight to the point. You've journeyed here
in hopes of an answer to a single, simple ques-
tion-the basic question from which flows the
whole sordid story. To wit:
What are the real lyrics, anyway?
A most excellent question, pilgrim, the very one that renders you
worthy of a quest such as this. Profound in its very stupidity. So
elementary that my original intention had been to answer it
straightaway, if only to show that the mystery of "Louie Louie"
does not subsist within it.
But lo! It came to pass in the fullness of time that composer
Richard Berry-hallowed be his mighty name-licensed the
rights to his masterpiece and, as happens every time anybody
makes a business deal in this yarn, the situation got all fouled
up. Berry sold his license to a company wondrously titled Wind-
swept Pacific, which sounds about right. Windswept Pacific sub-
licensed the print rights to a firm known as Warner/Chappell, a
division of the multi-tentacled megalith called Time Warner.
So, thirty years after it first hit the charts, "Louie Louie" had
slipped at last into the mighty corporate maw. No big deal, it
happens to (practically) everybody. However, Warner/Chappell
2
LOUIE LOUiE
seems to have been infiltrated by a master of the occult rites of
rock'n'roll lore, and this gremlin apparently decided that it
would be a major error to allow the authentic "Louie Louie"
lyrics, as composed by Richard Berry in 1956 and initially pub-
lished by Limax Music, to appear in a volume devoted to expli-
cating these sacred mysteries. Either that or they just didn't have
anybody handy who could or would cope with the prospect of
reading an entire book about one of their revenue-generators.
One way or the other, three months after Warner/Chappell re-
ceived the manuscript of Louie Louie, they still hadn't been able
to figure out whether the lyrics might safely appear here.
And that's OK. Perhaps the whimsical guardians of
rock'n'roll spirit have, on this occasion, proved more helpful than
they intended. Maybe it's better for a book about a song with
what surely must be the most notorious set of lyrics in creation,
let alone rock'n'roll, to contain not a single, solitary scrap of
them. If only to show that the point ain't just the lyrics.
Nevertheless, you now have some choices to make. On the
one hand, you can hie yourself down to the local music store and
see if they happen to stock a sample of the sheet music. Just
glance it over; you certainly don't need to buy one on my ac-
count. On the other hand, you could decide that, given such a
cosmic property as "Louie Louie," the likes of Warner/Chappell
couldn't understand or appreciate it anyway and, therefore, the
"official" version of the lyrics would be highly suspect, and keep
on thinking that you're hearing the things that you've always
heard.
As for myself, I've read the original lyrics and I believe what
they say. But you're under no obligation to share my faith. Mil-
lions now living do not and never will. From time to time, I've
wondered myself. But you gotta trust somebody. Don't you?
2
I
t is the best of songs, it is the worst of songs. A
rock'n'roll song, a calypso song, a sea chanty, a filthy,
dirty, obscene song, the story of rock'n'roll in a nut-
shell, the most ridiculous piece of junk in the history of
damnation. A stupid song, a brilliant song, an R&B oldie, a punk
rock classic, a wine cooler commercial, an urban legend, a sa-
cred text, a song with roots, a glimpse of the future, the song that
defines our purpose, the very voice of barbarism. A song that
casts a spell, a song that ought to have been forgotten and many
times has been - and for all that, a song that roots into the brain
until there's no erasing it. Barely a song at all-three chords and
a cloud of dust; the song that really does remain the same-no
matter the reinterpretations it suffers. An old story, an untold
story.
This is "Louie Louie." Love it or leave it. But if you choose
to leave, don't look over your shoulder, for what you'll see-a
garden of delights, a profanation of the very idea of "music"
(music properly understood, that is), the true and total history of
what once we were and have become-will not turn you into
anything so benign as a pillar of salt. It'll make you over as a
complete rockin' maniac.
If you tell it right, "Louie" 's story in all its weirdness offers
answers to a whole host of questions, ranging from the high ap-
3
LOUIE LOUiE
peal of low art all the way up to central existential quandaries-
questions of life and death, if not for you and me, at least for our
culture.
That's undoubtedly a preposterous and impossible state-
ment. Ignore every word of it. No rock'n'roll song lovingly re-
called for the incompetence and incoherence of its most famous
version could bear such portents. Ask Wynton Marsalis. Ask Al-
lan Bloom. Ask Albert Goldman. Ask Tipper Gore. Ask Harry
Connick, Jr., and Sr. But don't ask me to tell you that, because
I'm not that big a sucker. Things mean what they mean. You can
deny "Louie Louie" all significance, write it off as just a dam-
nable adolescent fixation, insist that it's symbolic of the end of
civilization at the end of the century. But it goes right on mean-
ing more than what that kind of snobbery will allow.
Don't take my word for it. Frank Zappa, that exemplar of
what happens if you study L.A. doo-wop too deeply, gets to the
prime meat of the musical matter in his 1989 opus, The Real
Frank Zappa Book, when he speaks of his compositions using
"stock modules" to create aural textures, among them sounds
derived from "Twilight Zone," "Mister Rogers," cornball band-
leader Lester Lanin, "and things that sound either exactly like
or very similar to 'Louie Louie.' " These textures, Zappa con-
tends, "are archetypal American musical icons, and their
presence in an arrangement puts a spin on any lyric in their vi-
cinity. When present, these modules 'suggest' that you interpret
those lyrics within parentheses." Zappa also notices that
"Louie" is built around one of the two basic 1950s rock'n'roll
chord patterns (I-IV-V).
Besides being a song, though, "Louie Louie" is a bunch of
other things, not all of them apparent to the untutored eye and
ear. For that matter, what is a song these days: A chord pattern?
A bunch of lyrics sung or recited with so tangled a tongue that
not even FBI scientists could decipher them? A bundle of rights
to be sold, acquired, poached, and permutated? Or just Duh duh
duh. duh duh?
"Louie Louie" raises all those questions but it's also an answer,
and answers are a big deal, because they're the rarest thing
around. "Louie Louie" is a Yes to the No that rock'n'roll in all
5
its diversity has always pronounced to the commonplace culture
around it. Once you get it, you have to realize that that No was
only worthwhile as a pathway to a Yes that affirms the human
heart and soul. It's an affirmation of the glory of absolute non-
sense.
What "Louie Louie" affirms is everyday, unchic, unbohem-
ian, unhip radiance. Its primitive chords, its half-baked melody,
trace the path to the apogee of spirit from the perigee of non-
sense and finds them one. "Louie" is a genuinely transcendent
object, a song to which we can dance out the concept expressed
so simply by Henry David Thoreau: "Heaven is under our feet."
So long as we never forget that the floor of heaven itself is not
devoid of banana peels.
We live in a world of trash, of dispensable icons, of Ten-Day
Wonders and This Year's Models. This season's Boy George
gives way in short order to Andrew Dice Clay; and they are not
so much polar opposites as brothers under the skin, their broth-
erhood confirmed in the rapidity of their fading away. Andy War-
hol may not have accurately measured the half-life of fame. It
surely persists longer than fifteen minutes, which accounts for
the proportionate rise in boredom as a determining factor in
everyday life. But Warhol got it exactly right about the general
ambition of life in a mediacracy. Trash is no longer a dispensable
piece of fun but an indispensable appliance of contemporary ex-
istence. So teach our postmodern pedagogues, Paglia be thy
name.
A sentiment we could all salute, if only the postmodernists
had the ability to discern degrees of quality in trash, between the
Elephant Trash (Ronald Reagan, Sylvester Stallone) that tram-
pIes everything in its hegemonic path, because it denies that
anything outside itself is real, and the Termite Trash (Madonna,
Jesse Jackson) that somehow maintains a breath of life, because
it hints that everything is real and thus empowers even its antag-
onists. Rock'n'roll started out as termite trash, an insidious bur-
rowing thing that always contained more than was possible given
its surface dimensions, but it changed as it went from "Sh-
Boom" to "Wooly Bully" to adaptations of Moussorgsky and ex-
propriations by Philip Glass. So rock is now inhabited by two
6
LOUIE LOUiE
species of trash, one termite and one elephant. At this point,
sorting one from the other could be a full-time job.
From this perspective, "Louie Louie" is rock'n'roll's grand
story-or at least, as grand as any story rock'n'roll has to tell. It
has made the full journey from the days of total termite status to
the ambiguities of today. From the less-than-a-footnote it started
out to be, "Louie Louie" -like rock'n'roll- has become a story
about splits and bifurcations, about unity and unifications. It is,
necessarily, something of a joke, because so many people had so
much trouble-and so much fun-accepting the obvious about
its nature and origins.
"Louie Louie" has fascinated me since 1964, when some-
body slipped me a copy of the "true" lyrics as I was stepping off
a school bus. I stumbled back into the story while I was trying to
tell another yarn-my book aboutthe 1,001 greatest records ever
made. "Louie Louie," from what I could see, sort of boiled all
those stories down into one.
This time I determined to get to the bottom of it. But
"Louie" 's story turned out to be bottomless. Every firm answer
was contingent on something that threw off more perplexing
questions. And yet, the answers could not be denied.
I'm not claiming "Louie Louie" is a mystery without a solu-
tion. On the contrary, the solution stares us all in the face every
time we hear the song. The mystery is not what this song- be-
yond the basic duh duh duh. duh duh- has to tell you or me or
the next guy. How could that kind of secret be concealed within
what is after all nothing more than a black vinyl 45 rpm record?
The answer to that mystery is so simple that I willingly give
anyone who has arrived in these pages for no other purpose than
to learn what "Louie Louie" really says the entire solution right
now. What "Louie Louie" has to tell you and me and the next
guy is this:
It all depends.
Your next question (presuming it isn't some whiny-assed var-
iation of "But are they really singing dirty words?") is obvious:
Depends on what? Ah, there's the true mystery. To solve that
one, you'll have to stick around for a while. But again, knowing
7
that these days nobody converses, even on paper, because no-
body has the attention span; knowing that we just sit there and
soak up TV, radio, or maybe the stereo if anybody has the energy
to get up and change tapes; aware as I am that we inhabit a world
without patience-in that light I shall immediately offer an out-
line of what it depends upon.
In 1989, Joe Roth directed a movie called Coupe de Ville. Con-
sidering that, only a few weeks after it was released (to good
critical and poor commercial reception), Roth gave up directing
to become president of 20th Century-Fox, perhaps it's fair to
imagine that Coupe de Ville represents his final verdict on the
role of artistry and creativity in our time. Perhaps not, too, but at
the heart of Roth's movie lies an effort to figure out family,
home, parents, brotherhood, community, human understand-
ing, and the general futility of it all- and the crowning metaphor
of his film is "Louie Louie."
What happens is plain enough: In the summer of 1963, a
father (transplanted from Detroit to Florida, on early retirement)
assigns his three sons to drive from Michigan to Tampa with a
present for their mother: a mint condition, powder blue 1952
convertible Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
The brothers take their journey together badly, as they are
accustomed to taking everything involving one another badly.
The oldest, Marvin, just released from the military, is a starched,
tight-ass martinet, a bully in temperament and demeanor.
Buddy, the middle son, is a University of Michigan nerd, the
kind of slide-rule guy regularly demeaned by the irredeemable
radical snobs of The Big Chill on their way across the quad. And
Bobby, youngest of the three, is a teenage hoodlum, filterless
chain-smoker, baiter of teachers, bane of parents, the only
brother with a sense of cool, the only one without any sense of
responsibility or even tolerance.
Midway through the film, the brothers are cruising a two-
lane blacktop somewhere in the South, Marvin at the wheel. The
Caddy is no longer pristine; its left front headlight's shot, a hole
has been burnt in the backseat, the fenders are now dented and
muddy. Enraged, Marvin grabs the knob of the radio, which is
blaring the Temptations' masterpiece "Since I Lost My Baby"
LOUIE LOUiE
(which wouldn't actually be recorded for another two years, but
never mind) and switches the station hard to the right. The radio
erupts: "duh duh duh. duh duh." Bobby, riding shotgun with a
cigarette in his mouth, smiles broadly at the first hint of the
Kingsmen and leans forward, turns the volume knob all the way
up. Then he leans back, puts his T -shirt-clad arms behind his
head, and clamps down on that smoke-FDR in a DA. In the
backseat, Buddy squints up his eyes and sings along: "Louie
Louie, let's dance real slow."
Bobby moves his jaws to the same beat, but what emerges is
"Oh, baby, got you way down low." Buddy leans forward: "Way
down low?"
"Those are the words," Bobby explains impatiently. "It's a
hump song."
"What's a 'hump song'?"
"When you hump. It's about humping."
"Oh, get off!"
"Listen," Bobby says with total certainty. On the radio, the
record is in the middle of a brief instrumental break. Then the
vocal comes back in. Bobby again sings along:
"I take her fuckin' all alone / She's never a girl I'd lay at
home."
"Those are not the words," says Buddy, doubt rankling.
"Have it your way," says Bobby, arrogance unperturbed.
"No," Buddy says, still wavering; maybe his dweeb friends
back in Ann Arbor got this wrong, too. He tries to be convincing,
but he's trying to convince himself. "It's about dancing. The
song is a dance. 'Louie Louie' is a dance. 'Do the Lou-ee Lou-
ay.' "
"Are you the only guy in the world who has never heard
these lyrics?" Bobby explodes in frustration. Addressing his
older brother as a moron, he says slowly, "It's a hump song. It's
about humping."
"It's about being in love and dancing," Buddy says haplessly.
He's beaten. Just then they pull into a gas station. Marvin, want-
ing a fill-up, leans on the horn for the attendant, who ignores
the three kids in the jalopy.
Bobby sings along again: "'Each night at ten, I lay her
again.' Didja hear that?"
9
"Did he say 'lay?' " asks Buddy, amazed (and relieved, no
doubt, to find an outlet for agreement). "He said 'lay,' didn't he?
Oh, my God, it's dirty. It's a dirty song! Oh, my God ... "
"You gonna throw up?" asks Bobby, poor winner that he is.
But Buddy doesn't notice. He's still incredulous at the revelation
of the connection, undreamt of in all his philosophy classes, that
there's a connection between "Louie" and humping.
By now, Marvin has had enough - of his brothers and of the
gas station attendant's recalcitrance. He clambers out from un-
der the steering wheel and goes to the back of the car, searching
for the gas tank. He speaks through clenched teeth, as if dealing
with orphaned idiots and with the authority of someone who has
done his service time and therefore knows the world: "It's not a
hump song, and it's not a dance song. It's a sea chanty." Bobby
looks at him, dumbfounded. "He's talking about going to sea
and leaving his girl ... " Marvin begins.
Bobby cuts him off: "A sea chanty? You mean like 'Yody-
hody, shiver me timbers?' "
This sends Marvin over the edge again. "I mean, like you
don't know what you're talkin' about!" he screams. "He's not
sayin' , 'Each night at ten, I lay her again.' He's sayin', 'Three
nights and days, I sailed the sea.' "
"You are so fulla shit," says Bobby derisively and Buddy
chimes in: "No, no, no. I'm sure I heard him say 'lay.' "
"He did say 'lay,' " says Bobby.
"He didn't say 'lay,' " contends Marvin. "Bobby said 'lay.' "
"So why is it called 'Lou-ee Lou-ay?' " asks Buddy, master
of the non sequitur.
"It's a code word for 'the Land of Enchantment,'" says
Bobby. Nothing disturbs this kid's confidence.
"No, see, in the third verse he says, 'Let's cut a rug, babe,
we're so in love,' " says Buddy, sure that if his new facts are
wrong, the old ones must have had their integrity restored.
"No," Bobby says, derisive as ever. "In the third verse he says,
'She's got a wang on, I move it above.' "
"He is talking about Jamaica!" shouts Marvin at the peak of
his pique because Bobby, without dropping a beat, has just
flipped up the tail fin, exposing the gas cap big brother has been
seeking.
10
LOUIE LOUiE
"What's a 'wang-on?' " asks Buddy.
On the radio, the record has reached its crucial third verse.
As the singer comes back in, each brother picks up the lyrics-
his own set. The result is cacophony perfected.
"See, what does that tell ya?" asks Bobby.
"It tells me, for one thing, that you've never been laid," says
Marvin, with terrible certainty.
"How do you know?" asks Bobby. At last, his confidence
shows a hint of cracking.
"Because anybody who's been laid knows that women don't
get a wang-on," says Marvin, ending the conversation decisively.
They fill up and drive on.
Marvin gets in the last word at the movie's end, when, after
updating us on family developments since that summer, he as-
serts, "By the way, 'Louie Louie'? It's a sea chanty."
But Marvin (and maybe this goes for Joe Roth, too) isn't in-
terested in solving the mystery of "Louie Louie." He is inter-
ested in having his own way. This marks him (or them) as novices
in the "Louie" mysteries. It is the task of the true "Louie" adept
to avoid doing any such thing-in fact, to avoid showing why any
interpretation of the song is right or wrong. To the contrary, the
deeply committed initiate's obligation is to prove, once and for
all, that they all are true. And false. In this way, and this way
only, can the true measure of "Louie Louie" and all that it rep-
resents ever be comprehended.
And that doesn't mean that Richard Berry ever wrote a dirty
word or that the Kingsmen ever sang one. Well, maybe one.
Rock lovers and rock haters both assume that great rock'n'roll
songs are, or ought to be, dreamed up on the spot. Rock fans
think this proves the music's tremendous spontaneity and dedi-
cation to amateurism or, at least, the proposition that doing it
mostly boils down to putting your heart in the right place. Rock
bashers promulgate rock-on-the-spot because it reinforces their
sense of it as throwaway garbage made solely to generate big
bucks and/or gonadal excitement, with an underlying purpose
either cynical or Satanic.
Problem is, neither rock lovers nor rock haters generally
know shit about how rock is made. Great rock songs aren't born,
I I
they're sweated out, and fables like the one about how Keith
Richard dreamed the riff to "Satisfaction," even if they're true,
mainly just distract you from the reality of the thousands of fin-
gertip blisters Keith developed learning the catalog of Chuck
Berry riffs down to the cellular level. You think you get to dream
in guitar riffs for free?
"Louie Louie" entered the annals of rock'n'roll mythology ac-
cidentally in the summer of 1963, when a quintet of Portland
teenagers assayed a demo studio version that stumbled into pub-
lic display by a weird series of chance developments. But
"Louie," the song, and its place in those teenagers' repertoire,
was anything but a product of happenstance.
In 1963 "Louie Louie" was already seven years old. It had
been a regional hit not once but twice. The Kingsmen may not
even have been the first group to record the song that week.
Furthermore, "Louie" certainly wasn't born in Portland, nor
even in Seattle among the white garage rockers of the Pacific
Northwest. The mystery of "Louie Louie" came to life in the
imagination of Richard Berry, a twenty-one-year-old black man,
already a recording studio and songmill veteran, who happened
to be sitting in the dressing room of the Harmony Park Ballroom
in Anaheim, California, on a Sunday night in 1956, when a
group called Ricky Rillera and the Rhythm Rockers went into a
cha-cha whose opening riff cried out duh duh duh. duh duh.
3
cpoJtk
1956
Richard Berry sat in the cramped, muggy dressing room of the
barn-like dance hall. The 1,200 capacity ballroom was packed
with local low-riders for the regular Sunday night gig of the
Rhythm Rockers, a ten-piece band led by Bobby and Barry Ril-
lera, Filipino-American brothers from Orange County. As the
group's featured singer, Richard sat out the first part of the set
while the band got the energy going with instrumentals.
Berry had sung with the Rillera brothers for more than a
year, appearing on a few of their Friday and Saturday dates
around East L.A. and always on Sundays at Harmony Park, 40
miles south of Los Angeles. The Harmony Park dates were pro-
moted by Orange County promoter Ralph Perez for members of
local car clubs, those legendary low-riders who slung the frames
of their slow-running hot rods so close to the ground that they
gave off sparks as they rolled. Low-riders loved doo-wop; even
thirty years later, those silken R&B harmonies remained the pre-
ferred pop sound of their barrio. "They would feature me doing
the rock'n'roll, rhythm and blues songs-my songs, a couple of
other people's stuff," Richard recalled. "I did two shows a night
and bam! I'd be gone."
12
13
All that came through the dressing room door was a steady
rhythmic thump. Yet early in this night's set a beat pulsing
through the walls made Richard sit up, hot-wired. Duh duh duh.
duh duh, it said. Berry heard it and he knew. Humming that riff,
while the song resolved into a standard cha-cha, he applied a
pencil to the only paper at hand, a bag crumpled up on the floor
and scribbed a few lines, the outline of a lyric.
Although he was only 21 years old, Richard Berry had al-
ready became a street-smart L.A. record hustler, the studio rat
who seemed born to stay up all night, singing into a mike for
pleasure and profit. Berry possessed the studio hustler's arsenal
of skills, including singing, piano playing, arranging, bandlead-
ing, and-potentially most profitably-songwriting. He was
moderately good looking and knew something about style, wear-
ing his hair waved with the front swept into a pompadour.
Onstage Berry asked the Rilleras to name that tune, "the one
with that great bass and piano intro." The Rilleras rattled off
titles. "You know," Richard finally said, "the one that goes duh
duh duh. duh duh."
"Oh, that," the Rilleras immediately told him. "That was 'EI
Loco Cha Cha.' Great, huh?"
"Yeah. Who's it by?"
"Rene Touzet."
Richard Berry awoke late the next morning in the house where
he'd grown up, on West 54th Street in the black ghetto of Los
Angeles. Duh duh duh. duh duh ran through his mind as he
dressed and went out to a record shop to buy Rene Touzet's new
record on the GNP label. He couldn't remember the title exactly
and he wasn't even sure he had the artist right. Rene Touzet
seemed such an unlikely name-wasn't it French? Even thirty-
five years later, Berry would remember the anxiety of waiting for
the needle to drop into the groove of "EI Loco Cha Cha." "But
when I played it, I said, 'That's the song.' " It wasn't hard to tell:
duh duh duh. duh duh, claves, bass, and piano said by way of
introduction. Duh duh duh. duh duh they said at the close.
Beyond that, "EI Loco Cha Cha" is a conventional cha-cha,
although, as Barry Rillera notes, "Touzet had a real way of get-
ting the cha-cha beat smooth, but real solid." And that smooth-
Ie:}
LOUIE LOUiE
but-solid duh duh duh. duh duh put Richard Berry on the trail of
the most unforgettable tune of his life.
Also, Richard possessed personality. People flat-out liked
him, from the Rillera brothers to the fabled arranger/producer
Maxwell Davis, who picked Berry up every day and drove him to
the Modern Records studio, where Davis was musical director.
Davis told Berry how the music world worked, let him sit at the
studio piano and toy with songwriting, gave him the chance to
prepare vocal arrangements - a fabulous education in a world
where doing was the fundamental mode of instruction. Davis did
this for the same reason that the Rillera brothers selected Rich-
ard as their part-time front man: Of all the guys who could do
the job, he was the best to be around.
Berry's voice was strong, pure, and-most important-adapt-
able. He could sing lead frantically like Little Richard, or in a
deeper Muddy Waters-style blues growl, or in a thrilling, deep
ballad style derived from Soulful Smoothie # 1, Jesse Belvin. He
displayed every part of his talent on a series of records released
with the Flairs, a group of guys he'd performed with in high
school; under his own name; and with a variety of other groups,
both famous and obscure. Richard also sang background parts,
from tenor to bass, though usually the lower ones. Best of all,
Berry could be a great dramatic foil, as he'd proven on two of the
most important Los Angeles hits of the rock'n'roll era: The Rob-
ins' "Riot in Cell Block #9," where his stoic basso lead thun-
dered threateningly, and Etta James's "The Wallflower (Roll
with Me, Henry)," in which Berry convincingly portrayed Henry
as so hot-to-trot he was willing to agree to any demand Annie
dreamed up. Berry totally rearranged "The Wallflower" during
the session. One reason Berry wrote a song to Touzet's Latin beat
was that he needed material for an upcoming session of his own.
In other words, "Louie Louie" was created about as ama-
teurishly as the atomic bomb.
Los Angeles's original rock and R&B singers would have been
shocked by the nineties idea of their town's rock heritage: wimp-
harmony acts from the Beach Boys to Wilson Phillips, glitzoid
bands like Warrant, pompous production puds like Richard
Marx, soft-target satirists like Randy Newman, and arch singer/
15
songwriters like Ricky Lee Jones. The doo-woppers, shouters,
and R&B teams of the fifties-from Don and Dewey to Little
Esther to the Cadets-would spit in the eye of all this trash, kick
'em in the balls, then open their mouths and show such impos-
ters how to rock.
Most histories of early rock'n'roll center on either New York,
the home of Allan Freed, greaser doo-wop, and the biggest rec-
ord labels, or Memphis, the home of the constellation of half-
cracked rockabillies and bluesmen-Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ike
Turner, Howlin' Wolf-around Sam Phillips's Sun Records.
Yet Los Angeles had more record labels in the early fifties
than any other city in the country. Its rhythm and blues record
companies were especially prolific and significant: Modern/
RPM/Flair, Specialty, Aladdin, Dootone, and Imperial Chief
among them, but also dozens of smaller outfits like Max Feir-
tag's Flip, Leon Rene's Class, and Gene Norman's GNP.
L.A. benefited from artistic migration: Little Richard, Lloyd
Price, and Fats Domino among others arrived in Hollywood on
a pipeline from sweet home New Orleans, and many of their
most able backing musicians, like the great drummer Earl
Palmer, followed. The first great independent record producers,
led by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller-and perhaps the greatest
of all fifties studio engineers, Abe "Bunny" Robyn-came from
L.A.
In Hunter Hancock, "Huggy Boy" (Dick Hugg) , and Tijua-
na's quarter-million-watt wildman, Wolfman Jack, Los Angeles
had its answers to Alan Freed. At its peak, the South-central
ghetto's main drag, Central Avenue, roared with live R&B blaz-
ing from churches, schools, and night clubs like Johnny Otis's
famous Barrelhouse-the stud barn of the local R&B scene-
and from taverns, living rooms, and storefront shops.
L.A.'s R&B blossomed out of the city's stature as trail's end
for the "territory bands" that traversed the Southwest in the jazz
and swing eras. The booming wartime shipyards and aircraft
factories gave black immigrants from the Deep South industrial
jobs (and industrial wages). Mter World War II, when economics
and dance fashion forced the big bands to downsize, the city be-
came home to stomping combos led by Wynonie Harris (origi-
16 LOUIE LOUiE
nally from Omaha), Roy Brown (another New Orleans native),
T-Bone Walker (who grew up in Texas), Roy Milton (an Okla-
homan), Amos Milburn (a Texan), Joe Liggins (from Okla-
homa), and Johnny Otis (a native Californian but, then again, a
son of Greek immigrants passing for black). L.A. also spawned
the cool suavity of the piano trio led by the immortal Nat "King"
Cole (from Chicago) and the innumerable imitators that Cole's
group inspired, most famously Johnny Moore's Three Blazers,
featuring Texas-bred crooner Charles Brown; the genius Ray
Charles of Georgia, via Seattle; and Percy Mayfield, a Louisiana
native.
Southern California also produced some of the most cata-
clysmic gospel music ever made, especially at Specialty Records,
which had the Soul Stirrers, Dorothy Love Coates and the Orig-
inal Gospel Harmonettes, Brother Joe May, Professor Alex Brad-
ford, and the Pilgrim Travelers. Reverend James Cleveland,
prophet and popularizer of the mass choir movement, made his
base in Los Angeles. The town was flush with jazzmen, too, in-
cluding Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Don Cherry, Eric Dol-
phy, and Art Farmer. And there were hordes of Latin bands,
playing mambos, cha-chas, boleros, and corridos.
First I started out as a singer with the Flairs. My first tune was
"She Wants to Rock." Mter this came numbers and numbers
of tunes until I wrote one which created some action. The Tune
was "Truly," which was Rhythm and Blues and was recorded
by Mercury, Coral, and a few other Pop Labels. Then I recorded
"The Wallflower" with Miss Etta James. Later I wrote her next
tune which started me on my way, "Hey Henry" and "Be
Mine." And now "Good Rockin Daddy" which is breaking big
for Etta and myself. So that's my brief but long story. I am still
singing and writing and hope to keep it up.
- RICHARD BERRY, career description,
BMI Publicity Questionnaire (ca. 1955)
Richard Berry was born in 1935 in Extension, Louisiana,
near New Orleans. He told L.A. R&B historian Steve Propes that
he'd been brought to Los Angeles a year later, to live with an
aunt. "When I was eight, my aunt bought a piano for her son
and I learned a few songs by ear. The first song I played was
17
'The Honeydripper' by Joe Liggins. The I learned a few boogie
songs."
Richard's father and mother soon came west, too, part of a
vast migration out of the South that transformed all of America,
especially its music, in the decades after World War I.
Berry's father got a job in the South Bay shipyards; his
mother went to work in a laundry. They settled in on Central
Avenue, on what was then the west side of the city's black resi-
dential area. The neighborhood was just beginning to integrate,
on its way to new segregation: John Muir, the junior high school
Richard attended, was 95 percent white; Jefferson, the senior
high, 95 percent black. (Los Angeles never did truly integrate;
even the American Federation of Musicians maintained separate
black and white locals until 1953.)
As a child, Berry suffered a hip injury; he doesn't say how.
Jim Dawson, historian of Southern California R&B, says he con-
tracted polio. One person who went to school with him claims
that Richard leaped off a garage roof "during the Superman
[comic book] craze." Either way, he was left limping for life.
"Through all the Xrays they found out that as I was growing, my
bones were growing shorter than [they should have]," says Rich-
ard. "So it produced this fracture and they had to insert a pin."
He wound up a frequent patient in the Crippled Children's So-
ciety on Adams Street, which sent him to a "camp for handi-
capped kids."
"I met a counselor up there. His name was Bill (I can never
think of his last name) and he taught me how to play the ukelele,
of all things. I used to walk around junior high school playing
the ukelele, you know, and doing the talent shows and every-
thing." This while he was at Muir Junior High, which fed its
students to Jefferson High School.
Richard couldn't wait to get to "Jeff," whose music pro-
gram- "the best, the best in the world" -included a swing
group that at one point in the late forties featured Cherry, Dol-
phy, Farmer, and Sonny Criss, later turning out Big Jay McNeely
and Chico Hamilton. Jeff was also famed for its a capella choir,
which produced 0. C. Smith and numerous heroes of Hollywood
doo-wop. Most important, its alumni included Jesse Belvin.
In a just world, Jesse Belvin's name would resonate with the
18 LOUIE LOUiE
power of Sam Cooke's. Mter all, when RCA signed Cooke in
1960, it was seeking a singer who could fit the crossover market-
ing plan it had in mind for Belvin, who'd just died in a car crash.
Belvin is remembered as a crooner because his nationwide
hits were "Goodnight My Love," "Guess Who," and "Funny."
But in L.A., he's recalled as a rock'n'roller, not just a Three-Hit
Wonder. He's also the guy who sang lead in 1955 on the Sheiks'
"So Fine," the next year on the Cliques' "Girl of My Dreams,"
and a year after on the Shields' "You Cheated." In addition, Bel-
vin made dozens of other records for John Dolphin's Recorded
in Hollywood, the Bihari brothers' Modern/RPM, and Art
Rupe's Specialty labels. Most importantly, perhaps, Belvin wrote
the seminal parts of "Earth Angel," which the Penguins turned
into the first R&B-to-pop crossover hit.
Jesse and his high school buddies learned the music business
the hard way. Their studies taught them that a young black
man's songs were worth everything and next to nothing, that he
would be cheated out of the money for the songs he created even
if he wasn't also robbed of credit for writing them, and that the
dough went to the (mainly white, always adult) owners of the
record labels who published the songs. Belvin and his boys also
came to understand that record royalties were an equally silly
charade. The companies would nickel and dime you to death
with phony expenses and undercounts. Since you generally saw
exactly as much money as you got on the spot when you sold or
made the session, and never a red cent more, you snatched the
cash and ran off to the next label down the block, paying no more
attention to the "exclusive services" clause of your contract than
the bosses did to the clauses about royalties due.
Jesse Belvin got next to nothing for writing and singing all
those hits, local or national, perhaps an average of $50 or (once
he became a semi-celebrity) $100 a side. Sometimes he got less
than that. Belvin had to fight a long, costly lawsuit for even a tiny
slice of "Earth Angel," though the song had its genesis on one
of the shirt cardboards on which he scrawled lyrics and song
ideas. This kind of crap made the black teenage R&B singers
budding into rock'n'rollers a band of teenage cynics, with Bel-
vin, the most talented, also the most contemptuous of the sys-
tem.
19
So Belvin boldly walked into a small-time record company
with half a dozen lines that he bluffed into a "song," selling
them the tune on the spot. They could have it outright, just so
long as he got his cash right now. Again and again, Jesse got
away with it. He could "hypnotize them with his voice because
he had such a strong effect on people when he sang," Gaynel
Hodge of the Hollywood Flames told Jim Dawson. "But after he
left with his money, the people would realize the song had been
all Jesse and all they were left with was smoke."
When Richard Berry arrived at Jefferson High in 1950, Bel-
vin, who was three years older, was already making records and
touring full-time. Berry and his buddies studied harmony with
Thurston Frazier, a choirmaster at a church at 46th and McKin-
ley, but still "Jesse was our mentor, our idol. Everybody had to
sing or record like him .... The inspiration was Jesse. We'd go
to his house and we'd listen to all his songs."
That first semester Richard was banned from Jefferson
High's choir for being a bad-ass. "I had to feel like 1 was gonna
be a gangster, 'cause 1 had a handicap, and so 1 had me a knife.
Didn't really like to fight .... But 1 had to take on that stance
because 1 felt that everybody'd see me walk with a limp, so 1 had
to establish a character: 'Well, yeah, the cat walks with a limp,
but he's a bad nigger. Watch out for him.' But when 1 got to Jeff,
there was just as many bad guys over there as 1 was.
"Then 1 learned about the a capella choir and 1 wanted to get
into it. But you had to be of extreme character to get in the choir.
And when 1 asked my music teacher about it he said, 'Well,
you'll never get into the choir because you got a very bad atti-
tude.' He told me, he says, 'If your attitude ever changes, maybe
we could.' And 1 went through a whole semester with an attitude
that was gonna get me in that choir. And 1 got in that choir, and
after 1 got in that choir, he used to take me around, even after 1
graduated. He used to take me around, and he let me perform
before the choir, go up and sing my songs and everything. 1
mean, 1 was the best thing in the world in that choir."
Jefferson High, like all Los Angeles (the temptation is to say
American) high schools from that day to this, had its own bad
attitude, about young black males. Jefferson's faculty and ad-
ministration were all white: "I think out of the whole school
20 LOUIE LOUiE
there were about four black teachers." Consequently, "there was
not too much emphasis on education for black kids. I had a vice-
principal who always used to tell me, 'Why you wanna go to
school? Why don't you join the service? What do you want an
education for? You ain't gonna be no doctor, you ain't gonna be
no lawyer.' It was always like a little snide thing, like an under-
current of remarks."
Before his freshman year ended, Richard was singing with
the Flamingos, a crew of friends who'd met in choir class: Gay-
nel Hodge, Cornelius Gunter, Curtiss Williams, and Joe Jeffer-
son. Hodge had brought the others together a year or so earlier
at Carver Junior High. This was the group of kids that hung out
with Belvin at his house on Long Beach Boulevard. "VVe'd go
over to his house and sit around and listen to him on piano be-
fore he went into the Army," Berry told Propes. "He had a re-
fined voice, he was the total balladeer, and if you could sing like
Jesse you had the girls."
The Flamingos at first sang mostly at parties, then took to
singing Sundays at the weekly talent show at the Lincoln Thea-
ter. "We always won," Richard told Propes. "We thought we
were big!"
The Flamingos changed their name to the Turks when Chi-
cago's Flamingos broke nationally. Then John Jefferson left the
Flamingos to join an early version of the Platters, which featured
Alex Hodge, Gaynel's brother. Around the same time, Curtiss
Williams left to help form the Penguins. Richard started singing
with a new group that included Gunter, Obie "Young" Jessie,
Pete Fox, and Beverly Thompson, all from Jeff High. Jessie said
this group was called the Debonairs.
They acquired another name, the Hollywood Blue Jays, in
the summer of 1953, when they made the mistake of auditioning
for John Dolphin in the studio at the back of Dolphin's Holly-
wood record shop at Vernon and Central.
Big John Dolphin was a cigar-chomping, ghetto empire
builder as ruthless in his own way as any of L.A.'s early land and
water robber barons. He promoted releases on his Recorded in
Hollywood and Cash labels with a KRKD radio show featuring
a deejay (initially Charles Trammell, later Huggy Boy) who
broadcast late at night from the store's front window.
21
Dolphin didn't think much of the group's audition (Berry ad-
mitted they were nervous) but, unbeknownst to them, he ran a
tape while they sang. Richard took the lead on "Tell Me You
Love Me," Cornell Gunter on "I Had a Love." Dolphin passed
on the act but kept the tape.
The group next tried Modern Records, L.A.'s most impor-
tant rhythm and blues record company. Founded in 1945 by Joe,
Jules, and Saul Bihari, three white brothers, the Modern group
(it labels included RPM, Flair, and Rhythm and Blues) culti-
vated a web of talent scouts and small producer associates, in-
cluding Ike Turner, that brought it such blues stars as Lightnin'
Hopkins (from Houston), John Lee Hooker (from Detroit), and
B. B. King (from Memphis). Modern's roster also included
Johnny Moore's Three Blazers with Charles Brown, Etta James,
Rosco Gordon, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Jimmy Witherspoon,
Floyd Dixon, the Cadets (aJk/a the Jacks), the Teen Queens, El-
more James, and Marvin and Johnny (a duo that sometimes in-
cluded Jesse Belvin). Although the company didn't record much
gospel or be-bop, it was involved in every other area of black
music and, in the early fifties, even recorded some country and
western.
Joe Bihari heard the music behind their nerves and told them
to go home and rehearse. A week later, they came back for a
session at Master Recorders in Hollywood. Maxwell Davis ar-
ranged and led the band; Bunny Robyn engineered. The songs
were "I Had a Love" and a new song written by Richard, "She
Wants to Rock."
"The Biharis wanted to do something with 'She Wants to
Rock,' so they introduced me to these two young guys named
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and they came in and added gun-
shots and sound effects," Berry told Propes. This was the first
example of the gimmicky style that Leiber and Stoller, with
much assistance from Robyn, perfected with the Robins and the
Coasters.
Bihari named the group the Flairs and released "She Wants
to Rock" backed with "I Had a Love" as Flair 1012, the label's
twelfth single, second in its R&B series. This probably happened
in late July or early August because Bob Rolontz wrote in his
"Rhythm and Blues Notes" column in the August 15, 1953, Bill-
22 LOUIE LOUiE
board: "Flair Records' new vocal group, the Flairs, is composed
of five 16-year-old high school students, who will make their
first professional appearance at the upcoming Gene Norman jazz
concert at the Shrine Auditorium, Hollywood." Rolontz noted
that they had been signed to a two-year contract, and wrote their
own material, an unusual distinction among vocal groups.
"I Had a Love" showed up in the September 19 Billboard's
"Coming Up in the Trade" column, devoted to records "selling
well but not yet strong enough to make national ... charts." But
on Dolphin's KRKD show, Charles Trammell was playing a sec-
ond version, released by Recorded in Hollywood. Although it
was billed as being by "the Hollywood Bluejays with Pee Wee
Crayton's Orchestra," it turned out to be the one that Dolphin
had surreptitiously taped during the Flairs a capella audition. As
Berry told Propes, "It was just that kind of crap that later got
[Dolphin] killed. "*
The Flairs went belligerently to Dolphin and demanded he
pull the record off the market. He refused, but the RIH version
flopped because it lacked "She Wants to Rock," which hadn't
been written when the "Bluejays" session took place. Although
the Modern release never broke beyond California, its two-sided
appeal established the Flairs as a significant local attraction.
The Flairs became Modern's all-purpose vocal ensemble. "I did
so much stuff with Modern, I've forgotten it all," Berry said.
They cut records under their own name (the second, "Tell Me
You Love Me," came out in November and they had releases
about every two months for the next few years), as the Chimes,
the Rams, the Howlers, the 5 Hearts, and individually-most
notably Richard Berry (the first of a dozen, "I'm Still in Love
with You"/"One Little Prayer" came out in October) and Young
Jessie (who made the mighty "Mary Lou," among others).
Richard cut more records than any of the others, because he
could sing so many different parts, from falsetto to bass, because
he was so close to Davis, and because the crippled youngster
without so much as a driver's license was almost always willing
*Dolphin was shot to death in January 1958 by songwriter Percy Ivy, who
was enraged over unpaid royalties.
23
to make a session: "I'd sit up there in the studio all day and walk
around, play the piano, think of songs to write. If I write this song
and we record it, I know I've got some instant money.
"It was great, because we were in school, everybody knew us.
We were kings on campus to everybody except the administra-
tion. . . . Of course we always wore our Flairs shirts with our
names written on them. We were hot shit, you know. We'd stand
up against the wall. 'I'm cool, man, I'm cool.' "
They toured as far east as Denver, as far north as San Fran-
cisco. "Matter of fact, I almost didn't graduate because I stayed
gone all the time. 'Cause where was you gonna find a buncha
black kids that could go out and make fifty bucks a night apiece,
singin' four or five songs. We'd work five or six nights in a row.
That was more than myoId man could make."
Richard argues persuasively that the Flairs were the first im-
portant teenage vocal group on record: "There was no Frankie
Lymon. The only groups around were Sonny Til and the Orioles,
the Ravens, and the 5 Royales. And those were guys that we
kinda patterned ourselves after, but our music was still different.
'Cause you know the 5 Royales had the gospel-type things."
This teenage quality is precisely what made the rawer,
harder-driving L.A. doo-wop so special, what made it
rock'n'roll. "In terms of arrangements and music, I think that
the East Coast stuff-like the Flamingos, the Swallows-was a
little bit more refined. The edges are much smoother," said
Richard.
Los Angeles never produced a harmony record as beautifully
complex as Richard's favorite, "Golden Teardrops" (which was
East Coast only on the premise that Chicago might as well be
New York to a Californian), but it developed its own doo-wop
style. As back East, the rhythm has a Latin accent, there's a lot
of deep-voiced moaning and a whole lotta high-voiced wooin'
goin' on, and almost all the wailing has to do with the tragedy of
teen romance. But in L.A. doo-wop there's a singular drive and
bounce, a salacious craziness, a willingness to go for any effect
so long as it works. Even on relatively smooth tracks like the
Jacks' "Why Don't You Write Me," this madness is pronounced
and it reaches true glory on slurry stuff like Marvin and Johnny's
"Cherry Pie" and the Penguins' "Earth AngeL" This places
LOUIE LOUiE
L.A. doo-wop closer to the blues, and at its best-on "Death of
an Angel," Donald Woods' ghostly, ghastly anthem of lovelorn
deprivation -it reaches close to the delirium blues of Rabbit
Brown's "James Alley Blues," a 1928 record so grandly poetic
that Allen Ginsberg lists it as his all-time favorite.
The Flairs never hit that level. But Richard Berry did.
In February 1954, Leiber and Stoller (now well known for writ-
ing Big Mama Thornton's huge 1953 hit, "Hound Dog") and
their mentor, song publisher Lester Sill, formed Spark Records.
Spark immediately signed the Robins, with whom Leiber and
Stoller earlier had recorded "That's What the Good Book Says"
for RPM. (The Robins first recorded for Savoy in 1949.) For the
group's first Spark release, Leiber and Stoller wrote "Riot in
Cell Block #9."
Leiber and Stoller wanted a vehicle for their song more than
they wanted to create a long-lasting group, so they felt free to
tinker when Bobby Nunn, the Robins' bass singer, didn't seem
very dangerous. This upset the Robins, since Nunn was the
group's featured singer. But Leiber and Stoller nevertheless
called in Richard Berry, whom they remembered from their ses-
sion with the Flairs. "They got me to do 'Riot in Cell Block #9,'
'cause they knew I used to sit around the piano and do all this
Willie Mabon stuff. They knew that I had that nasty type singing
voice."
The result was unforgettable. As Robert Palmer describes it
in Baby, That Was Rock 'n'Roll, his account of Leiber and Stoll-
er's career, "The record's rhythmic underpinning was a Delta
blues riff lifted from Muddy Waters, but everything else about it
was several years ahead of its time." Richard didn't just do a
guest shot; he was virtually a solo voice, the most prominent in-
strument in the music, save Gil Bernal's vicious sax.
Berry's portrayal of a tough black convict narrating a prison
riot had its comic side, but he dealt in dangerous double en-
tendres. "Pass the dynamite 'cause the fuse is lit," he intoned
and thirty years later you understand this as a possible code for
the emergent civil rights movement or, for that matter, a meta-
phor about the rise of a rock'n'roll itself, which three decades
later gave birth to a crew of "gangster rappers" (mainly L.A.-
25
based hustler/artists like N.W.A., Ice-T, and Ice Cube), whose
own bad-ass anecdotes used sound effects (sirens, tommy guns)
descended from Leiber and Stoller's. The genealogy is not at all
farfetched. In July 1954, CBS banned "Riot" from Peter Potter's
"Juke Box Jury" network radio show and from Larry Finley's
local KNXT TV shows. Berry knows it, too: "What I was doin' in
'Riot in Cell Block #9' was rappin'. It was rappin' with music."
Spark's weak distribution outside the West Coast prevented
"Riot" from becoming a national hit, but after its release in June
1954, it sold about 100,000 copies and even made noise on the
burgeoning rhythm and blues radio shows back East. The Rob-
ins cut a series of such spoofy dramas, notably "Framed" and
"Smokey Joe's Cafe," before the whole shebang moved to New
York, where Leiber-Stoller became independent producers for
Atlantic Records, which did have effective coast-to-coast distri-
bution. Leiber and Stoller later wrote many of Elvis Presley's
most important hits (including "Hound Dog" and the scores for
Jailhouse Rock and King Creole), charted a dozen hits ("Charlie
Brown," "Yakety Yak," "Young Blood") with the Coasters,
launched Phil Spector, and played a significant role in early six-
ties girl-group music.
For Richard, the success of "Riot" had more complicated re-
sults. "The Flairs weren't too pleased about me doin' it with the
Robins. The Robins weren't too pleased about me doin' it with
the Robins," he said. "Of course, Modern Records knew. They
said, 'We know that was you.' I said, 'Nah. '" He had to say that;
Richard was signed to Flair exclusively. But the Biharis weren't
exactly living up to the contract themselves. Berry's songs were
being copyrighted under the family's pseudonyms, "Josea,"
"Ling," and "Taub," thus depriving him of publishing royalties,
and their royalty accounting was, to say the least, subjective. In
the archetypal style of the independent record business, the Bi-
haris grumbled briefly then set to exploiting Richard's achieve-
ment on "Riot." Joe Bihari even suggested Richard quit the
Flairs.
"We had like a camaraderie that was there, that you didn't
break. So I pondered over it. And I liked the idea but it kinda
scared me too. 'Cause you always find shelter in a group. But
they finally convinced me to do it and the guys in the group
26 LOUIE LOUiE
weren't too pleased about it. But in the back of my mind I could
see the handwriting on the wall, because we could see the enthu-
siasm starting to die off in the record company."
The Flairs were flickering. Of the group's half-dozen singles,
only "Love Me Girl" got any action outside of L.A. In April it
was a Billboard "territorial tip" from St. Louis. Mter he hit with
"Mary Lou," Young Jessie also quit; Pete Fox joined the new
group that scored first with "Why Don't You Write Me" as the
Jacks, then as the Cadets with "Stranded in the Jungle," a play-
let as bizarre as any of Leiber and Stoller's. Cornell Gunter
formed the Ermines then packed for the East to join the Robins
as they became the Coasters. (Ironically, Bobby Nunn was one
of only two original Robins who made the move.) Still, they'd
really accomplished something: "Out of that group of five guys,
there were four guys that went separate ways individually and
[ are] still in the music business."
Mter a late summer shot with the female quintet the Dream-
ers on "Bye Bye," Richard's post-Flairs solo career began with
Bihari demanding a "Riot" sequel. In October he gave them a
rewrite called "The Big Break" (Flair 1055), in which "Riot'''s
deep-voiced con and his pal, Snake, decide to get out of stir once
and for all. This droll but somewhat less felicitous follow-up got
little attention in Los Angeles. Richard's next record, the riotous
"Next Time" (another stop-time blues novelty, in which he's
hauled into "district court, room 299" for failure to pay his rent)
is far funnier and less derivative, but it sold less than "The Big
Break." (The song later made some noise for Sam Butera and
Louis Prima.) Over the next two or three years, Richard re-
corded Little Richard-like wailers such as "Mad About You"
and "Yama Yama Pretty Mama"; "Crazy Lover," a rewrite of
Muddy Waters's "I'm Ready" with Big Mama Thornton on
harp; "I'm Still in Love with You," in the Fats Domino mold;
Chuck Berry-style hard-rockers like "Rockin' Man"; and "Oh!
Oh! Get Out of the Car," which combined a Leiber-Stoller style
of narrative with the car-song trend kicked off by Chuck's "May-
belline."
Meantime, his work as sideman and sessioneer continued. "I
was on maybe 50-60 percent of the records that came out" of
Modern in the mid-fifties, he claimed. Berry sang, wrote, and
27
arranged with Arthur Lee Maye (Lee Maye, as the National
League knew him, was then a bonus baby with the Milwaukee
Braves) and the Crowns, incuding the great "Gloria." After Shir-
ley and Lee made mixed duos popular, Berry teamed with Jen-
nell Hawkins as Ricky and Jennell.
But the next major notch in the Richard Berry legend was
carved "on a foggy Thanksgiving eve in 1954," Berry told
Propes. "Hank Ballard was having a big hit with 'Work with Me,
Annie' and everybody was doing answers to it. Maxwell called
me about 11 at night and said he needed me over at the studio.
I drove through that thick fog over to the Biharis' new studio on
Washington Avenue in Culver City.
"Etta was there with four girls [the Peaches] who couldn't
sing too well. She already had the basic song, but we reworked
it, she and I, there in the studio. It was called 'Roll with Me,
Henry.' Etta wrote most of the words and I helped her a little,
but Johnny Otis, who was there on the session, beat her out of
the writer's credit." In the end, copyright infringement suits
were filed by Valjo Music on behalf of Otis (who, whatever his
role in creating the music, undisputably was the first to air the
song, playing it on his radio show in January, causing a sensation
even before the tune was officially released); Armo Music, Hank
Ballard's publisher; Lois Music in New York; and a writer named
Frank Kelton in Hollywood.
As the voice of Henry, the uncredited Richard Berry kicks off
"Roll with Me, Henry," shouting "Hey, baby, what'd I have to do
to make you love me?" then answering Etta's instructions
throughout the first verse. And it's Berry's interplay with James,
especially at the end, when he meekly accedes to her imperious
commands, that makes the disc a classic.
The record business of the 1950s was no less ruthless than it
is today. By February 5, after less than two weeks in distribution,
Billboard called "Henry" an R&B hit in New York City, Balti-
more, Nashville, Durham, Cincinnati, New England, upstate
New York, Detroit, and St. Louis, as well as Los Angeles. But
James didn't have a chance on pop playlists, where a strict color
line remained in effect. Mter "The Wallflower" (the new title
under which it appeared on the Billboard chart) topped the black
chart, it was immediately covered by Georgia Gibbs, a semi-re-
28 LOUIE LOUiE
formed big-band singer who made millions by glomming onto
R&B hits by such R&B greats as James and LaVern Baker, whose
records racist radio programmers wouldn't air. (Baker finally got
so mad after Gibbs hit #1 on the pop charts with a genetically
identical cover of "Tweedle Dee," that she wrote her congress-
man about theft of song styles. The complaint was made public
but nothing came of it. To this day, singers have few legal reme-
dies against such stylistic poaching.)
Gibbs emasculated "The Wallflower." Her Henry was asked
not to "roll" but to "dance." Gibbs just tried to get that 01' Hank
out on the floor to cut a rug, rather than try to get him to do his
stuff right on the carpet. But the white audience hadn't yet re-
belled against such bland evasion, so Gibbs still had a million-
seller. Soon, the "Annie"I"Henry" fad faded. So Modern's se-
quel, "Hey, Henry" (issued in May with Richard credited as Et-
ta's partner), stiffed. But James did return to the R&B Top 10
with the Berry-written "Good Rockin' Daddy."
By late 1955, though, Richard was fed up with Modern Records.
"I didn't have any animosity against the Bihari brothers. 1 think
they did business on the scale that everybody else was doing on,"
he later said. "They treated their artists with a little bit more
humanity than some of the other record companies did." But
Richard had little to show for two years of dogged work at the
label.
"Fifty bucks was good money around 1953, 'specially for
kids," Berry said. "Those fifty bucks bought me a car and stuff,
where 1 never woulda been able to afford even a bicycle. So the
opportunity was there. But after being in the businses for four or
five years, then you started gettin' these little things like, 'The
guys in the record company's doin' you guys out of your money,'
bam bablam bablam bablam. And then you go through your
awakening period, where you say, 'Yeah, you know, like, how
come every time we get a statement we owe the record company
money?' We always were in the red, or whatever you wanna call
it. We always owed them money.
"Then it dawned on me. 1 said, well, 1 know how the record
companies do this. Even if you had royalties, you could have
$50,000 up there in royalties, and they could take you in the
29
studio and record you five or six days, and they would charge
you for it, even though they wouldn't release the records. They
still charge you for the session, the studio time. So when you
look up, you say 'Man, what happened to my fifty grand?' 'Well,
you know, we went in the studio and we recorded.' And of
course, we didn't have access to lawyers and managers like the
kids comin' up today. They got four or five lawyers before they
even go to a record company."
"I could almost at any given time go to Joe [Bihari] and ask
for an advance and get it," Richard acknowledges, but he re-
ceived no performance royalties, no songwriting royalties, and
many of his songs had been published with co-writer credit, and
royalty money, assigned to the Biharis. You don't get rich at fifty
bucks a night, but after a while, it became clear that if the singers
and musicians weren't getting rich, someone was. The Biharis
had prospered so mightily that in May 1954 they announced a
move to a newly completed 5,000-square-foot Culver City re-
cording studio and office building next to their Cadet Record
Pressing.
"We were all young and ignorant. We didn't have a lawyer,
never had a manager, didn't know that as minors our money was
supposed to go through the courts and go into a fund until we
were 21," Richard told Propes. "I didn't know anything about
BMI [which collects money for broadcast performances, if the
songwriter is registered with it] until Maxwell Davis told me
about it in 1955. Modern was collecting my royalties and keep-
ing me ignorant. When I finally asked them, 'What's this Josea
shit?' the Biharis told me the distributors would promote my re-
cords more if they saw that name on it!"
So Richard filed a lawsuit for back royalties ("It took me five
years to get about $1,800 out of a suit that started at $50,000")
and cut out to record for a variety of labels, doing one-shots as
Ricky, or Ricky and the Pharoahs, for little labels like George
Motola's Empire (with a batch of tunes written by Belvin, who
told him, "These people be giving away a lot of money") and
Leon Rene's Class. Each of his records was good, but still none
hit outside L.A.
"We had what you call regional hits. You'd have a top selling
record in New York, but nobody heard of you in Buffalo. You had
30
LOUIE LOUiE
a #1 record in Philadelphia, but nobody heard of you in Pitts-
burgh. You could have a hit record in Kansas City, but nobody
knew of you in St. Louis. It went on and on and on." Mter
"Earth Angel," this began changing, but Los Angeles didn't be-
come the center of the recording universe for another decade.
In January 1955 Billboard wrote that "Max Feirtag, formerly as-
sociated with Imperial Records, last week disclosed formation of
a new independent label, Flip Records. Firm will specialize in
R&B and a line of authentic Latin American music."
Feirtag, listed as secretary/treasurer on the 1946 incorpora-
tion papers of Lew Chudd's Imperial Records (a key L.A. R&B
label that released Fats Domino, among others), ran his new
venture out of an apartment on Sixth Street near LaBrea Ave-
nue, just south of West Hollywood. Feirtag had been around the
record business for years; his wife, Lillian, says that he made his
first releases "about 1948." Nobody remembers him as espe-
cially musical, but Flip still came up with three of the most im-
portant Los Angeles R&B records: Donald Woods's "Death of
an Angel" in the summer of 1955, the 6 Teens' "A Casual Look"
in the summer of 1956, and in the summer of 1957, Richard
Berry's "Louie Louie."
Berry signed with Flip at the end of 1955, but his Modern
contract hadn't expired. Modern continued releasing Richard
Berry material through "Angel of My Life"/"Yama Yama Pretty
Mama" (RPM 465) in June 1956. Richard had begun working
with a new vocal group, the Pharoahs: baritone Noel Collins,
first tenor Godoy Colbert (replaced by the time it came to
"Louie" by Stanley Henderson), and second tenor Robert Har-
ris. Berry occasionally supplemented them with Gloria Jones
(about whom he wrote Arthur Lee Maye's doo-wop classic) and
Jennell Hawkins (his erstwhile duet partner, for whom he wrote
"Moments," a 1961 R&B hit).
"The Pharoahs were already a group. They were young guys
into Jeff High just as I was leaving. They weren't really doo-wop,
which was fine with me 'cause I was getting into a Latin thing.
They had a funkier sound. The Flairs always had access to a
piano when we went over to Pete Fox's house and rehearsed, but
with the Pharoahs we'd rehearse at my house, get loaded, turn
31
the lights down, and start singing. In the darkness, that was
when I could really hear the harmony that I wanted and that's
what made my music change, 'cause we didn't have the piano to
work off of." Richard didn't work with the Pharoahs exclusively.
His days of exclusive musical association ended with the Flairs.
He still sang session dates and he still worked dates with the
Rhythm Rockers.
After Richard figured out that "EI Loco Cha Cha" was the right
record, he began to rework its opening and closing riff and a
chunk of its melody to fit the lyric idea he'd scribbled down on
the paper bag in the Harmony Park dressing room.
This doesn't mean Richard Berry stole "EI Loco Cha Cha"
any more than the Rolling Stones stole the half-dozen of their
most famous songs that indisputably owe their origins to Chuck
Berry-because Berry owes Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker, and
Charlie Christian equally. Lawsuits about such issues were and
remain common, from the cycle of litigation around "The Wall-
flower" to U2's 1991 attack on the punk band Negativland's
sampling of its wares. But that's never prevented boasting about
the provenance of one's material: In October 1956, Billboard re-
ported, "Publisher Goldie Goldmark took the prize this week for
finding the most unlikely source of R&B material yet reported.
He maintains that the background figure in Screamin' Jay
Hawkins's Okeh release 'I Put a Spell on You' is from Haley's
opera La Juive (written in 1835). Who could prove that it isn't?
It's doubtful if even Haley could." Anyway, since the copyright
on La Juive had long expired, Goldmark had no fear of litiga-
tion. Yet to this day Richard Berry must be circumspect about the
origin of "Louie Louie," even though the "EI Loco Cha Cha"
revelation is hardly fresh.
Anyway, by the time the Kingsmen made "Louie" famous,
and valuable, it no longer had a Touzet beat. For that matter,
even Richard Berry and the Pharoahs' "Louie Louie" is not "EI
Loco Cha Cha." Duh duh duh. duh duh isn't uncommon in
Latin music; you could sing "Louie Louie" to "EI Loco Cha
Cha," but you could also hum that other great 1963 hit, Ray
Barretto's "EI Watusi."
The biggest, or at least most readily apparent, difference be-
32
LOUIE LoUIE
tween the two songs is the lyrics. Touzet's are in Spanish and
have nothing to do with sailors, the sea, Jamaica, or the moon
above. Berry's is an account of a homesick navvy explaining to a
barkeeper why he pines to renew his dalliance with the darling
he's left on his home island. (In Richard's song, "Louie" is the
name ofthe bartender the sailor addresses, not the singer. Rich-
ard says that the sailor "didn't have no name.")
"What Richard Berry wrote is not without antecedents. By far
the most important was Chuck Berry's "Havana Moon," the flip
side of his 1956 nonhit, "You Can't Catch Me." Chuck sang
"Havana Moon" to a calypso beat, using a Jamaican accent. "I
wanted to write a song like 'Havana Moon' all my life," Richard
says, "and I was working with a Mexican band, the Rhythm
Rockers." The Rilleras (whom Richard sometimes calls "the
Riveras") aren't Mexican; they're Filipino-American. But they
played for Mexican audiences.
In "Havana Moon," Chuck Berry sings a forlorn calypso
about a Cuban sailor who waits up all night, accompanied only
by a jug of rum, for the American girl with whom he's fallen in
love to arrive and take him away to live in a New York City high-
rise. But the sailor, fearing she'll never come, anxiously sips too
deeply from his jug so when, at dawn, she does arrive, he's out
of sight, comatose on the dock. He awakens to bright sun and
blue skies just in time to see the boat carrying his weeping girl-
friend "head for hor-i-zon." The connection to "Louie," where
a pidgin-speaking sailor moons into his glass about his girl and
sweet home Jamaica, couldn't be clearer. But Chuck Berry's
shaggy dog ballad lasts half a dozen verses; Richard Berry's three
verses are far more concise and elliptical.
"Louie" 's other lyrical inspiration was Johnny Mercer and
Harold Arlen's standard, "One for My Baby (and One More for
the Road)," also known as "Set 'Em Up, Joe," first sung by Fred
Astaire in The Sky's the Limit (1943) and popularized by Lena
Horne in 1945. But the version generally regarded as definitive
is Frank Sinatra's somber but swinging 1958 Nelson Riddle ar-
rangement. Richard knew the song because its 3 A.M. self-pity
made it a staple for every saloon singer.
In "One for My Baby," an anonymous lovelorn sot drops in
on Joe, the bartender, just before closing time and fills him in on
33
his romantic woes, a scenario all but identical to the one con-
fronting Berry's Louie. Richard had to be careful here. In rock
or R&B, Johnny Mercer's scenario would be absolutely insup-
portable: The singer is already drunk and suggesting he have
"one more for the road" would have earned any black or teen
songwriter instant condemnation then as now. But it was under-
stood that white-collar drunks of the kind portrayed by Astaire
and Sinatra posed no social threat. Berry evaded the issue of
drunkenness-his protagonist may have poured his heart out for
a bartender but not a drop touches his lips.
"Louie Louie" 's pedigree extends further. "One for My
Baby" comes from a grand tradition of late-night drinking
songs, all of them saturated in abjection and remorse. "Havana
Moon" was as derivative of Nat "King" Cole's 1949 "Calypso
Blues" as "Louie" was of "EI Loco Cha Cha." "Calypso Blues,"
in which a Trinidadian sailor presents his plans to cut out from
the cruel USA for home and honey, is closer lyrically than any
other song to "Louie Louie." Also, in picking a name for his
forlorn sailor, Louis Jordan's 1946 hit "Run Joe" might have
crossed Richard's mind; not only is the lyric similar to some of
Leiber-Stoller's comic tales of a man on the lam, but the track
opens with the Tympani Five chanting "Louie, louie, louie," an
invocation of their leader's name that becomes, like the latter-
day reiterations of "Lou-ee, Lou-ay," a hypnotic nonsense
phrase.
Mter Richard finished writing "Louie" in April 1956, he and
the Pharoahs, with Gloria Jones adding the feminine touch, im-
mediately recorded it at Hollywood Recorders on Santa Monica
Boulevard, using a band led by pianist/arranger Ernie Freeman.
The band also included drummer Ray Martinez, Irving Ashby
on guitar, Red Callender on bass, and a horn section featuring
Plas Johnson, Jewel Grant, and John Anderson.
The same group also recorded in late 1955 and earlier in
1956, but Feirtag didn't issue any records because he didn't want
a legal problem with the Biharis. By April "fresher" material was
wanted. So Richard cut "You Are My Sunshine," "Somewhere
There's a Rainbow," and "Sweet Sugar You," plus "Louie."
Freshness didn't seem to be the real issue: Richard's first Flip
LOUIE LOUiE
release featured "No Kissin' and Huggin" b/w "Take the Key,"
recorded at the 1955 session. But "No Kissin' " flopped and
"You Are My Sunshine," the Governor Jimmie Davis country
standard, came out as Flip 321 in April 1957. The B side was
"Louie Louie."
Berry chose "You Are My Sunshine," a song he remembered
from childhood: "We used to sit up in the living room quite a
few nights with the red light on and we'd be singing 'You Are
My Sunshine.' I thought that if I was ever gonna have a hit rec-
ord it was gonna be off of 'You Are My Sunshine.' " (Not a wild
idea: In 1962, Ray Charles put an R&B version of "You Are My
Sunshine" in the pop Top 10.)
"Louie Louie" was an afterthought. "I didn't think 'Louie
Louie' was gonna be a hit. I just thought it was a good song that
I wrote," said Richard. "But everybody that I ever talked to had
a preference of 'You Are My Sunshine' over 'Louie Louie.' Even
now people that used to follow me and still know my music al-
ways tell me, 'Well, yeah, man, "Louie Louie" was great but
"You Are My Sunshine" was greater.' "
Hardly. But what Richard did with "You Are My Sunshine"
was akin to what he'd done with "EI Loco Cha Cha": "I dis-
sected it and put it together with the harmony and stuff, and
even added my own little bridge in the song .... I just made that
up, you know, 'cause you always had to have a bridge in a song
in those days. In those days, if a song didn't have a bridge, it
wasn't a song. I mean, you just can't have this thing goin' on and
on. You put in the bridge." Technically such alterations to a song
should be done only with the writer and publisher's permission
but "nobody ever bothered us about it," since the record never
hit.
The restructured "You Are My Sunshine" yawped bolder
than anything Richard had recorded for the Biharis, but "Louie
Louie" was bolder yet, though not so bold as he'd hoped. "When
I heard this song I envisioned all the timbales and the congas
going and me singing 'Louie Louie.' " In his dreams Berry made
the song a thorough mixture of Latin and R&B accents, perfect
for a moment when Billboard was writing about the converging
tastes of R&B fans and "record buyers of Mexican and Spanish
descent."
35
Max Feirtag might have been interested in "authentic Latin
American music," but he didn't want any part of Richard Berry's
hybrid. "We don't want that crap," Richard remembers Feirtag
saying, "We want a good R&B-sounding record." So the song's
Latin accoutrements were deleted, "which," Richard now
thinks, "mighta been a good thing when the Kingsmen got it.
You often wonder what woulda happened if I had recorded
'Louie Louie' the way I had it envisioned in my mind."
Richard Berry could sound like the most dangerous man on
the cell block, but his original version of "Louie Louie" isn't
even raucous. As the Pharoahs chant their duh duh duh. duh
duh, they sound less threatening than jaunty. Berry made a
dozen records you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, but
"Louie Louie" isn't one of them. Turn his "Louie Louie" up as
loud as you please; it thunders not, neither does it shatter ear-
drums, speakers or consciousness. It's an R&B dance tune with
a hint of cha-cha, a vehicle for a beat, and Richard's vocal is
imploring but ultimately sure of itself - "me gotta go," he seems
to be telling that barkeeper, because what's waiting for me is
fine.
Records sell by word of mouth, which builds best and quickest
through radio airplay. Because there are many more records re-
leased than there is time to broadcast them, whoever gets to pick
which ones get played - and played, and played - becomes a
powerful shaman. In the 1950s-though, alas! no longer-the
men making radio's musical decisions were mostly deejays.
Those deejays were myth-mongers, projecting a convincing per-
sonality on the thinnest possible evidence: a sheet of sound com-
posed of nothing but a human voice, a few taped jingles, and a
bagful of musical mist. For a time in the 1950s, deejays were at
least rock stars' equals in fame and wealth.
The king of Los Angeles rhythm and blues record-spinners
was Hunter Hancock, who possessed a high-pitched voice, a
self-deprecating avuncular streak, and a penchant for bad
(sometimes leering) jokes offset by a gift for spotting new hits
early. Hancock first hit Hollywood in the early 1940s; he claimed
to be the first white man in America to air black music, but
whether or not that was true, by 1948 he'd worked his way up to
36 LOUIE LOUiE
a daily show that made must listening for R&B and jump-jazz
fanatics.
Hunter Hancock's sonic self-image became an entire world,
all of it based around Negro jive music. "Huntin' with Hunter,"
his KGFJ show (on KFVD it was "Harlem Matinee") opened
with a bugle call. "Let's go a-huntin' with Hunter," said a staff
announcer, "huntin' around for some of the very best popular
Negro musicians, singers, and entertainers in the world. You'll
hear music that runs the gamut from be-bop to ballads, swing to
sweet, and blues to boogie, records that are the tops in popularity
around the country along with some of the newer records, whose
popularity will be determined by you, the listeners." Then you
were off into the deep depths of R&B with a heavy emphasis on
local Los Angeles favorites.
Maybe Hancock didn't know much about R&B until he got
Todd Clothes of Watts as a sponsor, but by the fifties he knew all
that was necessary about how to spot what was then known as a
"sepia" hit. He staged talent contests and amateur shows at the
fabled Barrel House and Club Alimony; he even had his own
record labels, Swingin' and Magnum. By 1954 "01' H. H." was
a legend-when he went to the Rockies on his regular hunting
trips, or performed as tenor soloist at the Hollywood First Meth-
0dist Church, or got a new sports Mercedes, it was news in the
industry trade papers. In 1956 the local CBS affiliate gave him a
television show, "Rhythm and Blues"; Maxwell Davis led the
house band.
"Hunter used to play all our records," Richard said. "He
would play your record and then, after a while, flip it over and
play the other side. And he never asked for any money or any-
thing. He had record hops and stuff, where you were always glad
to do something for Hunter because he played the local guys."
Hancock wasn't only good; he was smart and tough. When
the morality types began the first anti-R&B witch-hunt, he
stepped to the music's defense more aggressively than any other
disc jockey then or since. "It is my contention that most of the
criticism being leveled against R&B is unwarranted," he told
Billboard in May 1955. "True, some rhythm and blues has ob-
jectionable lyrics, but so do many of the top-selling records in
the popular and Western fields. Actually, R&B is the music that
37
to the average Negro is his pop music." By August 1956, when
the clamor, inflamed by the Tin Pan Alley songwriters being put
out of business by popular demand for rock'n'roll and R&B, still
hadn't been quelled, and promoter Hal Zeiger was threatened
by the El Monte city council with a ban on all rock shows, Han-
cock called forth an industry group, including Speciality's Art
Rupe and bandleader Johnny Otis, to counteract the witch-hunt.
(Zeiger lost in a decision clearly based more on anti-black and
anti -Latin racism than any threat to public safety, and the legend
ofthe shows at El Monte Legion Stadium-which led to Frank
Zappa's first great song, "Memories of El Monte" - began.)
Leaving Modern Records may have been a necessity but it didn't
improve Richard Berry's living conditions. Feirtag proved
cheaper than the Biharis ever had. While Richard was going to
school and living at home, he'd been prosperous, owning a huge
1949 Buick convertible with a Continental kit (and employing a
cousin as chauffeur because he still couldn't drive). At 21, living
on his own, money got so tight he had to think twice about mar-
rying his girlfriend, Dorothy Adams (who later recorded as
Dorothy Berry and toured with Ray Charles as a Raelette).
Without even a local hit since the Flairs broke up, recording
and singing live couldn't support him anymore. So he went to
work as a stock clerk and general laborer at Monarch Records,
a record pressing plant. "Max got me the job 'cause, I guess, he
got tired of me hittin' on him for advances .... I used to call him
my Jewish father because he's, 'You gotta have a job, Richard.
You can't depend upon this business. You gotta have a job.' "
Richard was working at Monarch one afternoon when
Hunter Hancock made a special announcement. "He says,
'We're gonna do something we never did before. We got this
record by Richard Berry, it's the flip side of 'You Are My Sun-
shine.' We've got so many calls for it, we're gonna play it every
hour on the hour.' For a week, he played 'Louie Louie' every
hour on the hour."
This only made things worse at Monarch. "Every time the
song came on, the guys would say, 'Hey man, they're playin' your
song.' This Japanese guy was my foreman. He says, 'Whadda
you want this job for?' He says, 'You gotta hit record.' I says, 'No,
38 LOUIE LOUiE
1 don't have a hit record.' 1 says, 'Even if it was, 1 don't have no
money, man, I'm not working.' 'You oughta give this job to
somebody else.' 1 said, 'I need this job.' He was really off the
wall. 1 think he was a racist, too. Because he put me outside,
breakin' up returns. Like seven o'clock in the morning in No-
vember-it's cold in November, you know-and I'm out there
with a hammer and the guys are inside where the heater is.
So one morning 1 just threw the hammer in the barrel and 1
walked in and 1 walked over, and 1 said, 'Fuck it, you know, that's
it.' "
"Louie Louie" was a full-fledged regional hit, popular to
some extent all the way up the Pacific Coast, especially in San
Francisco. "I used to work up there every weekend, I'd make
anywhere from three to four hundred dollars, five hundred dol-
lars a week." Serious bucks for those days, but it didn't last.
Sometimes Richard regretted leaving Modern. Feirtag never
cheated Richard - but he couldn't deliver hits either. "Max
told me we sold 40,000 records at the beginning of 'Louie
Louie.' 1 said, 'Well, if you sold 40,000 how come you can't sell
a hundred and forty thousand?' Well, that's all it was gonna
sell.
"At that time 1 was always second banana to the Six Teens.
He would always be telling me about this guy, Ed Wells, who
wrote ["A Casual Look"] for the Six Teens. 'Oh, you know, you
gotta do like Ed, you gotta save your money, blah bablah bablah
bablah.' But when 'Louie Louie' became the hit for Flip Re-
cords, then all of a sudden, now everything was 'Louie Louie.'
It wasn't the Six Teens anymore. Then he started asking
me to write for the girls in the Six Teens, and so on and so
on."
Max Feirtag and Richard Berry shared no musical vision. "I
had this song called 'No Room,' which 1 figured was the greatest
song 1 ever wrote. 1 told Max, 1 got this song that's got so much
soul in it, make you cry. He says, 'Well, 1 don't give a fuck about
your soul. 1 just want to sell records. 1 want another "Louie
Louie." , Oh man, that pissed me off so bad, you know. So 1 said,
okay, I'm gonna write a piece of shit. Well, at that time they had
"Have Gun, Will Travel" on TV, so 1 just wrote, [he sings] 'Have
39
love, will travel' and put 'Louie Louie' behind it. And five years
later, after 'Have Love, Will Travel,' he calls me and says, 'I'd
really like to do a song with you that has some soul in it.' " To
be fair, "Have Love, Will Travel," musically a "Louie Louie"
rewrite, is fabulous, recorded definitively by the Seattle garage-
punk group the Sonics and still performed by everybody from
Paul Revere and the Raiders to Bruce Springsteen.
But none of Richard's Flip follow-ups hit. As the "Louie
Louie"-related live work petered out, Richard briefly worked
the docks with his dad. But with his bad hip that job couldn't
last.
In 1959 Berry and Feirtag suffered a complete falling out.
Part of it stemmed from Feirtag taking off on his annual trip to
Europe at a time when Richard felt he should have been making
new records. But Max was also angry about Richard's outside
recording ventures. "He refused to pay me royalties 'cause he
said I had violated my contract," Richard said without a hint of
bitterness.
"Things got kinda tight and then I wanted to get married. I
always knew that you could go to record companies and ask for
a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, but when you started get-
tin' up to two and three hundred dollars, they don't want to give
it to you. And I wanted seven hundred and fifty dollars; I really
wanted a grand but I settled on seven hundred and fifty.
"I knew with Max there was no negotiation. He was one of
those tight, tight, tight jeans types," said Richard, apparently
without exaggeration - he told Steve Propes that once, asked for
a $400 advance, Max took him to the bank and withdrew four
hundred one-dollar bills, which he counted out into Richard's
hand one by one. "I mean, I could go and ask Joe [Bihari] at any
given time, 'Man, I need two hundred bucks.' Maybe he'd tell
me, 'Well, I can't give it to you now. Can you wait for about a
week?' But with Max it was always like you wanna ask your dad
for some money."
So Richard decided to sell his share of the publishing and
songwriting rights to "Louie Louie" to Feirtag's publishing
company, Limax Music, which already controlled the other half.
"I figured, what the hell, I wasn't getting my royalties any-
LOUIE LOUiE
way. I just thank God that I kept my BMI rights." Richard got
his $750.
For the next Q8 years, except for small semi-annual airplay,
checks from BMI, that was the only income "Louie" would
bring its creator.
4
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ApYtit 13/ 1957
y 1959 "Louie Louie" wasn't even a has-been
item, it was a dead song, a corpse whistling past
its own graveyard, every bit the nonentity Bill-
board claimed it was, a relic for ten-cent bar-
gain bins and prepacks of a dozen 45s you've never heard of sold
for 89 cents just to get rid of 'em. Flip 321 was nothing more
than another disc that failed to click, a slab of vinyl that rested
only in a few attics and garages and in the mossy collections of
low-riders and oldies freaks. No more than a couple hundred
thousand people-at most-have ever heard it, even though it
was reissued in 1986 on a Swedish collectors album compiling
some of Richard Berry's 1950s work (Richard Berryl"Louie
Louie," Earth Angel JD 901). Perhaps that many more think that
they've heard it on the Rhino album The Best of 'Louie Louie'
(Rhino RNEP 605, 1983), but that's a re-recording, made be-
Lit
LOUIE LOUiE
cause Max Feirtag refused to issue a license permitting Rhino to
use the Flip master. The Rhino remake intentionally replicated
the original so closely that Feirtag called producer Richard Foos
to complain.
"When stuff like that starts to happen, questions outweigh an-
swers. Like, what is this "Louie Louie" - a song, a record, a
property, an artifact, a memory? How come the guy who pre-
vented Rhino from using Richard Berry's old tape couldn't keep
them from using the song, which he also owned? And if "Louie
Louie" as Flip 321 by Richard Berry and the Pharoahs was
moldering away in the dustbin of history in 1959, how did it
come to pass that, by the beginning of 1964, this hunk of R&B
junk had become the #2 song in the entire nation, according to
the self-same Billboard's Hot lOa?
"Louie Louie" is all five things: a song, a record, a property,
an artifact, and a memory. It became a song when Richard Berry
wrote it. It became a record when Richard Berry first brought
the Pharoahs and Ernie Freeman's combo together in a studio
and Max Feirtag agreed to press and distribute it.
That's where things get complicated. The copyright law re-
garding music is a peculiar thing, and in 1957 it was even more
peculiar. In the first place, the law-which supposedly protects
creators of artistic works from being deprived of the fruits of
their labors-provides a statutory ceiling on what the songwriter
may receive for a recording: At that time, the amount was two
cents per record sold, a figure that had been established in 1909
and wasn't changed until 1976. The reason it took so long for
composers to get a raise is that whole industries-juke boxes,
record companies, and song publishers - based their economic
livelihood on the copyright law and a change benefiting one or
the other of them was bound to adversely affect at least one and
maybe a lot more of the others.
In those 67 years the center of the popular music industry
shifted. A song-based business became a record-based business;
an industry devoted to works that could easily be written out as
sheet music became an industry devoted to works that were per-
formed in ways that have never been properly annotated. Song
publishers in 1909 were the equivalent of record companies to-
day. By 1957 (let alone 1976) song publishers were banks or,
more accurately, siphons - capable of tapping a major portion of
a recording's income by virture of statutory quirk and industry
custom.
In the early years of the century, song publishers performed
an indispensable function: They printed and sold sheet music,
and they sought out performers to publicize the song by singing
it in shows, concerts, or-as time went on-in the movies and on
the radio. For this work the publishers took 50 percent of the
song's income unless the tune was sold outright, the way Richard
sold his, in which case they took 100 percent. (The BMI pay-
ments that Richard continued to receive were for broadcast air-
play only. BMI doesn't allow writers to sell their share in a song's
performance rights. ASCAP [the American Society of Compos-
ers, Authors and Publishers], which was formed by established
Tin Pan Alley songwriters, most of whom also happened to be
song publishers, will let you sell the whole thing. But this didn't
matter much to R&B songwriters, because in the fifties ASCAP
advocated segregation, both racial and stylistic.)
By the fifties most songs sold as records, not sheet music. At
first that didn't matter much, because record company A&R
men came to publishers for material. But as R&B and rock'n'roll
took over, more and more performers began crafting their own
tunes. Song publishers still had a useful purpose to perform, at
least so long as the color line held-somebody had to collect the
money from Georgia Gibbs's version of "The Wallflower." The-
oretically, the publisher sought out such "cover versions" and
remakes. But in reality it didn't work that way for black writers.
Their record companies set up publishing companies that were
in most cases little more than passive collection agencies, al-
though their rake-off was still half the song's income. As often
as not, these publishers simply diverted more income into the
record label, sometimes outright swiping credit from writer/per-
formers and giving it to the record company owner, the A&R
man, or an influential disc jockey. (What are the odds that Alan
Freed really co-wrote "Sincerely" or "Maybellene"?)
You'd think the last thing that Etta James and Modern Re-
cords would want was for Georgia Gibbs to snatch a song like
"The Wallflower," and as far as Etta is concerned, you'd be
right. But Modern might have had other ideas, because its Mod-
qq
LOUIE LOUiE
ern Music subsidiary would collect a huge check either way. The
Bihari brothers were certainly not in business to challenge the
separate, unequal status of black recording artists. Of course, if
Etta James instead of Georgia Gibbs had gone to #1 on the pop
charts, Modern would have collected two big checks, so probably
they would have tried to stop Gibbs. But that would have been
illegal.
While no other writer can take these sentences and para-
graphs and put his or her name upon them and claim them for
their own, songs and songwriters lack such protection. For music
the 1909 law devised something called the "compulsory me-
chanicallicense," a provision that says once a song has been re-
corded by one performer, anybody else who thinks they're ca-
pable of singing it can also record it, provided they pay the writer
and publisher a reasonable fee (if two cents per side is a reason-
able fee which it was in 1909 and wasn't by about 1929).
Of course, two cents was the maximum anybody would have
to pay; record companies often negotiate the price downward,
especially now that the maximum is more than seven cents per
side. But if the negotiation fails the record company knows that
it'll never have to pay more than the statutory fee-it's a ceiling,
not a floor, on what songwriters can earn. In 1909 the compul-
sory mechanical license prevented a few big songwriters, pub-
lishing companies, and star performers from monopolizing all
the good tunes. But by 1957, compulsory licensing meant that
black performers had no hope of keeping the mitts of white in-
terlopers off their hits. Thus, Perry Como's version of Gene &
Eunice's "Ko Ko Mo," may it rot in hell.
And that's why Max Feirtag couldn't keep Rhino Records
from making the Best of 'Louie Louie' album and paying his Li-
max Music subsidiary a passel of dough.
At this point it's pretty easy to see why and how "Louie
Louie" ceased to be just a song or just a record and became that
most hallowed of cultural objects, a capital-generating property.
(Copyright issues have become known, in one of today's more
outstandingly ugly neologisms, as debates over "intellectual
property. ")
But how did a piece of R&B tripe like "Louie Louie," a mere
B side worth nothing more than a mediocre 70 on Billboard's
y5
rating scale, become a cultural artifact that sustained itself
across another three decades and grew into one of the most re-
corded and performed songs ever?
While calling "Louie Louie" an important cultural artifact
might be enough to make Adorno puke, that is exactly what it
became. Except for a few pachucos and their acolytes, the song
hadn't achieved such status even in 1959, but it was on its way.
And it was on its way because its memory lingered on, long past
what preachers and schoolteachers, moms and pops, congress-
men and music critics (including, sad to say, rock critics) would
ever predict. This occurred because Richard Berry's "Louie"
was the real thing, a record whose groove refused to let go. If this
makes "Louie Louie" sound like a kudzu of the spirit, well,
okay. But remember, you're going to have to follow that prejudice
straight down the doomed gullet of John Belushi.
The reason folks up and down the West Coast remembered
"Louie Louie" even after it stopped appearing on "Huntin' with
Hunter" isn't so hard to figure out. Richard Berry knows why:
"It was an R&B dance song. And it was still a cha-cha. At that
time, everyone was doing the cha-cha-cha."
And then again, it was a rock'n'roll song and even though
most of the people who sold and marketed and promoted it at
the time thought the stuff was rubbish, rock'n'roll (as an idea, at
least) really was spiritual kudzu, or as the Showmen's great an-
them, "It Will Stand," put it in 1961: "It swept this whole wide
land / Sinkin' deep in the hearts of man."
From a purist standpoint this makes no sense at all. No Bill-
board critic of 1957 or 1959 or even 1963 would have identified
Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" as rock'n'roll, because neither
song nor record has anything like a rock'n'roll beat. But
rock'n'roll shook off all definitions that tried to limit it or any
other narrow musical form. Rock'n'roll became a concept, an
idea, signifYing spirit more than sound.
Ironically, Max Feirtag, with his gaze firmly attached to the
bottom line, figured this out sooner than Richard Berry, and this
is probably why he figured that "Louie Louie" was worth the
whopping sum of $750. Richard was ready to make the transi-
tion from R&B to soul music, because he'd been exposed to
LOUIE LOUiE
Bobby "Blue Bland out on tour. "It was like I had gotten the
Holy Ghost," Berry told Propes.
Yet "Louie Louie" remained the most unavoidable fact of his
career and somehow Berry knows, "That song made me a
rock'n'roll artist. When I went out on the Bobby Bland-Junior
Parker tour up to the Northwest in 1957, I was there to attract
white audiences." Not only that, "Louie Louie" continued to
sell. Eventually the Flip version of the song may have sold as
many as 130,000 copies, which was as many as a far bigger hit
like "Death of an Angel."
Why? What made people remember this piece of Mro-La-
tino fluff? Easy:
Duh duh duh. duh duh.
Put it in your brain and it won't come out. It's not hypnotic ex-
actly, but it's as mesmerizing as anything anyone's dreamed up
in five decades of this stuff we now call rock'n'roll. Duh duh duh.
duh duh is a mnemonic so powerful that even Adorno would
have had to be dragged gibbering away from his desk if ever he'd
caught wind of it.
And so, lost though it may have been to history, "Louie
Louie" hung on, persisting in common memories, waiting like a
virus for the opportunity to erupt.
Up in the Pacific Northwest the kudzu that was "Louie
Louie" found its spiritual home. By the time those guys were
done with it, "Louie Louie" was no damn cha-cha anymore. It
was a rock'n'roll song, forevermore.
5
Little Bill Engelhart and his buddy Buck Ormsby had spent the
day strolling the fairgrounds in Puyallup, the little farm town
where everybody- hipsters and squares, tough guys and geeks,
moms and dads, toddlers and teens -went in mid -September for
the Puyallup Fair. The summer's-end celebration probably even
featured the adolescent Jimi Hendrix walking the dusty midway;
Hendrix was a student in Seattle. Lots of folks came to Puyallup
from farther away than that, eager for the season's last chance to
hit the rides and sideshows.
Engelhart and Ormsby made an unlikely pair. The short,
feisty Buck personified cool-as-tough. Engelhart stood even
shorter; he'd had polio as a child so he dragged his way through
the fairgrounds because of the braces on his legs. Yet Buck and
Little Bill were best friends at Tacoma's Stadium High School
and after school, too. They led Tacoma's only rock band, Little
Bill and the Bluenotes, one of the first groups in the whole Pa-
cific Northwest. Engelhart turned out to be a better than pass-
able rhythm and blues singer. Ormsby played bass, but he was
also the Bluenotes' motive force, the one who didn't just dream
about the big time but actually dared reach for it.
They'd gone to the Puyallup Fair to hunt girls and kicks, not
qg
LOUIE LOUiE
to meet aspiring Elvises. But as dusk was coming on, Buck and
Little Bill rounded a corner and saw a crowd gathered round a
bench. Upon it stood a four-eyed young man yelling his head
off. Buck and Bill strolled over to see what the guy was harangu-
ing about. As they drew nearer their ears told them that this was
no ordinary crackpot heralding our Savior and the End of Time,
but a crackpot whose speciality was singing rock'n'roll, mainly
Buddy Holly songs.
"Wait a minute! I know that guy," Buck said to Bill. "That's
Robin Roberts."
"You mean the bookworm?" said Bill to Buck (or words to
that effect), for the Robin Roberts of Tacoma's Coliseum High
was a full-fledged, slide-rule-bearing, pencil-pocketed geek.
"People kinda harassed him once in a while. But he actually was
a Buddy Holly-lookin' kinda guy," Buck remembered many
years later.
Roberts didn't just look like a bookworm; he was a college-
bound math and science wiz with a palpable future. That made
his singing display that much weirder. Rock'n'roll was for mis-
fits, outcasts, delinquents with bad grades. Maybe they weren't
quite losers, but the kids who latched onto the music were cer-
tainly among the least likely to succeed.
But as they watched and listened, Engelhart and Ormsby
could not deny the evidence of their ears. Robin Roberts not only
had the guts to get up on a park bench in the middle of the only
state fair in western Washington, he not only had the sheer nerve
to sing Buddy Holly in broad daylight without a band in the sum-
mer of 1957, when to do such a thing was to risk your reputation
as a sane human, let alone a scholarship candidate, Robin Rob-
erts was actually damn good. So when he finished singing and
strolled on his way as the impromptu audience tried to figure out
what it had just run into, Buck and Bill called out to him.
"Hey, that was great! You wanna be in our band?"
He did. Thus was born Rockin' Robin Roberts, one of
rock'n'roll's great lost wildmen.
Every kid listened to rock in 1957 but it was a lot harder for
kids - any kids, let alone white kids in the whitest part of the
nation-to take the bold step of publicly affiliating themselves
/ / : o u k / / ~
qg
with the renegade music. To participate in rock'n'roll back then
was to associate yourself with all the undesirable elements: ju-
venile delinquency, hoodlumism, sexual degeneracy, and the
spectre of racial mongrelization.
Maybe it was a mite easier for Buck and Bill, working-class
kids without much future to risk, when they put together their
first band in 1956. Little Bill, with withered legs too wasted even
to wear tennis shoes, certainly had nothing to lose. He heard
dreams of a better world played out in the R&B music beginning
to ooze out of late-night radio. More typical of the rocking class
was Buck, who bore an unmistakable chip on his shoulder but
kept himself always ready to go the limit for a friend. Ormsby,
years ahead of his time, dreamed of the rock band as an ideal-
ized noise-making community.
Buck started out mainly playing pedal steel guitar. Pedal steel
came from country and western bands. At the time all the white
bands in the Northwest specialized in C&W. Given the huge
number of transplanted Southerners who'd worked for the aer-
ospace industry, lumber mills and shipyards, and the ones who
were based at McCord Air Force Base and the Army's Fort
Lewis, playing country music made the most economic sense.
(Loretta Lynn, among others, began her career in Washington
for this very reason.)
But as in L.A., the Southern migration imported all kinds of
music. Seattle also became a new home to black Southerners
(not many but enough) and with them came black blues and
R&B. Somewhere in between fit the sped-up renegade C&W
called boogie. Seattle also possessed its own big bands and the
smaller combos that played jump music as the big bands splin-
tered.
If Los Angeles had the nightlife of an anything-goes boom-
town in Richard Berry's youth, Seattle-at least by reputation-
was even more wide open. In the early fifties, Seattle and Ta-
coma were every bit as tough and wild as big cities on the West-
ern frontier ought to be. Seattle, the bigger of Puget Sound's
not-quite-twin cities, was full of bars and after-hours joints like
the Rocking Chair, the Esquire, the Palomar Theatre, and a
blues joint called the Washington Social Club, where B. B. King
and Muddy Waters - having strayed as far from the Delta as it
50
LOUIE LOUiE
was possible to get (in several senses)-occasionally held forth.
Little Willie John, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and Clyde
McPhatter brought their salty, sassy, slow-grooving music to the
city, playing the joints in the central district for black Service-
men, and what few black workers there were, then in joints
north of Denny Street for mixed audiences as their music-with
its heightened eroticism typified by Ballard's "Work with Me,
Annie," Willie John's "Fever," McPhatter's "Honey Love"-
caught hold of whites. Seattle also hosted the West Coast brand
of blues, derived in equal measure from the jump bands and
from the blues musicians typified by Lowell Fulson and his huge
hits, "Three O'Clock Blues" and "Reconsider, Baby."
The Bluenotes-despite Buck's odd instrument-wanted to
rock those rhythm'n'blues like what they heard on the radio and
saw on weekends at the Evergreen Ballroom: "Little Bill knew
about these things and he took me out there," Buck recalled.
"He was the guy who had the car. I didn't have a car; I was 16
years old. So I go out there and I'm standing in a sea of black
people and there's two little white heads sticking up there, and
that was Little Bill and me. And we were catching all these black
acts-you know, Little Junior Parker, Little Willie John. We used
to go up and talk to 'em. B. B. King'd sit on the stairs and talk to
Little Bill. It was like casual, no big deal. Bobby Darin came
through with Little Richard and the Upsetters once, singin'
'Splish Splash.' He sat down and talked to us.
"It was just, the show was over, okay, let's go home. But we'd
be little guys who'd go back and talk to 'em, find out more about
'em. 'How'd you get that idea? Where'd you come up with that?'
And they were real nice people, excellent people. I never met
any nicer people. 'Hey, I'll go get my guitar and show ya.' I re-
member B. B. King doin' that with Little Bill. 'Hey c'mon.' "
In Seattle big bands and country stars played at roadhouses like
the infamous Spanish Castle out on U.S. Highway 99, just past
the Tacoma city limit. Some of these acts were locally based, like
Oscar Holden's big band, and the early groups formed by the
great Bumps Blackwell, who in the mid-fifties linked up with
Specialty Records in Los Angeles and became the maestro be-
hind the hits of Little Richard and other rock'n'roll stars.
51
Long before it spewed out the loathsome banality of Kenny
G, Seattle was home to such substantial jazz talents as pianist!
educator Billy Taylor and Quincy Jones, who got his start in
something called the Bumps Blackwell Junior Band after a stint
spent living next door to Ray Charles. Most of the local jazz play-
ers were trained by Oscar Holden, a music teacher who'd grown
up in New Orleans and-legend held-played riverboats down
there with Louis Armstrong, then toured with Cab Calloway's
big band before settling in Seattle in the mid -thirties. During the
war and just after, Holden's band was enormously popular. "My
dad would even do gigs at the Seattle country clubs," recalled
his son, Ron. "We were solid black middle class."
All this music didn't come in separate packages. As early as
1951 saxman Billy Toles, an Illinois Jacquet sound-alike who'd
done a stint with Louis Jordan, was running what's been called
Seattle's first rock'n'roll group. A couple of years later, about the
time that Bumps Blackwell headed south, organist Dave Lewis's
trio was installed as the house band at Birdland, the most prom-
inent of the after-hours joints. Lewis scored with three instru-
mental records-"IA.I," "David's Mood," and "Little Green
Thing" -which became local standards for the white bands that
sprang up in his wake.
Toles and Lewis were both black. They inspired dozens of
kids, both black and white, to make music for themselves. As
groups like Little Bill and the Bluenotes began appearing, Bird-
land also featured back-up bands and intermission acts manned
by teenagers, some of them white.
Even though the city's residential areas and even music
unions were segregated, its club scene never was. "At that point,
the black population was not a threat," Ron Holden says. "The
military was the difference. The reason my dad's band was so
popular during World War II was that Seattle was a port of em-
barkation-it's where they left from, it's where they returned
to - Fort Lewis, Bremerton Naval Shipyard."
Not that the Pacific Northwest was free of racism, as any of
its Asian and Native American residents could attest. But be-
cause there were so few blacks, the degree of discrimination
against them was relatively small- as Ron Holden discovered
the minute he left to tour behind his 1960 hit, "Love You So."
52 LOUIE LOUiE
In Seattle Holden had never played in a band that wasn't inte-
grated, but he got no further than Los Angeles when the bad
news slapped him in the face: "In Seattle in the fifties black
wasn't about blacks-there were no niggers or anything like
that. There was no ghetto. That was my rudest awakening of all
when I came to L.A. The Indian population was replaced by
Chicanos. Then I went to New York City and then out on the
chitlin' circuit, behind the Cotton Curtain, where our first stop
was North Carolina and I got slapped right in the face with dis-
crimination and racial prejudice."
Seattle wasn't paradise, but in the days of Jim Crow it was at
least liveable-the price you paid was that your horizons were
limited, because the city had no music industry, only a few rinky-
dink studios, and not enough of a black community to support
black-oriented institutions like radio stations and newspapers.
So while Seattle had a role to play in the careers of Ray Charles,
Quincy Jones, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Little Richard, Billy
Taylor, and Larry Coryell, the city eventually had to be aban-
doned by each of them lest a major career stagnate.
Nevertheless, it's worth considering an article called "Why
Did the Northwest Have a Different Sound," writte;:} for a 1964
edition of The University of Washington Daily by young Coryell,
then a journalism student at the University of Washington and a
guitarist with local rock bands:
The Seattle bands have by and large stuck to the blues and
turned a deaf ear toward the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Al
Hirt. Hence, Seattle bands like Dave Lewis and the Dynamics
have developed original and natural styles of playing that are
welcome alternatives to the pop music that is packaged and
peddled by Madison Avenue and shoved down the ears of gul-
lible subteens as "music of today."
Whether Dave Lewis's style was "natural" or simply less
mannered than the stuff Coryell (who within two years became
nationally famous as one of the pioneers of jazz-rock) derided is
open to debate, but Seattle's resistance to trendiness is a prime
characteristic of its rock scene from the late fifties straight
through to the grunge of the early nineties. In fact, the best Pa-
cific Northwest bands did not reject anything at all, including
53
what Coryell believed to be "Madison Avenue pop," but main-
tained an elastic attitude that incorporated everything it heard in
idiosyncratic ways: This is as true of Jimi Hendrix as it is of
Quincy Jones and, for that matter, grunge bands like Soundgar-
den, Seattle's rap kingpin, Sir Mixalot, or even that poor 01'
hack, Kenny G.
Out of this stew of influences a Pacific Northwest rock aes-
thetic began to emerge. It boiled down to a willingness to try
anything, make any unlikely noise, adapt all available resources
in the service of shaking the spirit.
Outsiders thought of Seattle as wild, but locally Tacoma was re-
garded as the genuinely tougher place-smaller, more industri-
alized, more working class, more militarized, and more ethnic
than Seattle, suffering beneath the noxious "Tacoma aroma"
produced by the city's mills, a Northwestern Nazareth from
which nothing good could come. It was in Tacoma that the great
rhythm and blues singer Little Willie John stabbed a man to
death and wound up spending the brief rest of his life at the state
pentitentiary in Walla Walla. The secret of Pacific Northwest
rock is that the best bands of the fifties and the sixties -including
the Wailers, the Sonics, and the Ventures-all hailed from Ta-
coma, not Seattle. Buck and Bill may have been rock'n'rolllon-
ers, but not for long. The area's most important band of the frl'-
ties was not the Bluenotes but the Wailers, a group whose
members were drawn from several different Tacoma high
schools, including Coliseum.
In 1956 and 1957 nothing that could be called a "rock
scene" existed. The Wailers came together as a fundamentally
instrumental combo drawing on the light jazz styles professed by
Dave Lewis and the then popular "cool" West Coast jazz style.
The Bluenotes, a Caucasian version of an R&B revue, were out
on a limb. It wasn't until Buck scraped together the cash for the
first Fender Precision electric bass that showed up in a Seattle
music shop in early 1957 that the Bluenotes became a recogniz-
able rock'n'roll group.
"There were other bands: kinda country, rockabilly bands,"
Buck remembered. "But they didn't have rock instrumenta-
tion-we had sax where some of the other groups didn't have
5q
LOUIE LOUiE
sax. We just thought that the natural configuration for a rock
band at that time would be bass guitar, lead guitar, drums, sax-
ophone, piano, organ. So we had a Wurlitzer, which was our
piano, we had an M3 organ-that was our configuration. And
eventually what we did in the Bluenotes was, we added another
tenor and a baritone sax and we had that real rich sound. No
brass, all saxes. Warm, hard. So the Bluenotes was like an R&B
show-you know, current R&B of the time and some originals."
Their breakthrough came from winning a talent show. "It
was held at the Crescent Ballroom right down in the middle of
Tacoma. They had jugglers and dancers and we happened to
win. So they put us on a half-night with this country band. At
first, the audience was 25 percent rock'n'roll people and 75 per-
cent country. Then 50-50. Then 75 percent for us. Then 100
percent. The owners couldn't believe it, that people would come
out and pay to see this stuff."
Like Richard Berry and the Flairs, the Bluenotes found
themselves high school heroes. And they were at what might
have been the most beautiful high school in North America, for
Coliseum High overlooked the full sweep of Commencement
Bay from a hilltop perch that held on one side a natural amphi-
theatre-the Coliseum-where football games were played in
full view of what seemed to be the entire north Pacific. No mir-
acle that such a school produced more than its share of dream-
ers.
Yet American working-class high schools consider it their
mission to stamp out dreaming in favor of students who follow
orders and get down to business. This is nowhere truer than at
working-class American high schools abutting military bases,
pulp mills, sawmills, and aircraft factories. You didn't have to be
a bookworm to understand that, you just had to be alive enough
to grasp the dehumanizing futility of what the faculty passed off
as success. Perhaps this accounts for the eventual status of that
fine chemistry student, Rockin' Robin Roberts, as Seattle rock's
prime wildman.
"We sort of discovered him," Buck remembered. "I mean,
he'd already discovered himself. He had a lot of nervous energy
and he let loose with it wherever he was. He was a genius, really.
He was a chemist, eventually got a master's degree. And he was
55
the greatest natural-born entertainer I've ever seen. He was
alive." In places like Tacoma at times like that, being alive could
get you in a lot of trouble. It could also make you a star.
But first you had to make the leap. The way Buck remem-
bered it, "You had the city fathers, the city mothers, trying to
protect the kids from this rock and roll music. It was only going
to last a year anyway. It wasn't even called rock and roll then.
There wasn't really a name for it until somebody coined the
word: rock and roll. It was rhythm and blues then, or rockabilly
in the Southeast. Then hey, that rocks, that rolls. It was black
talk, old blues guys rapping.
"There weren't really any places to play then. You had to find
your own places. We'd play parties and once in a while we'd go
out and rent a hall, a grange hall or fire hall or Norwegian hall,
you know; and get four, five hundred people to come out. You
couldn't do the teen dances. The only teen dances were the ones
the high schools put on-chaperoned, ballroom situations-with
an old band playing foxtrots and so on."
Even when you found a place to play, dangers abounded, as
Ron Holden found out the hard way, when he began working
with his first really popular band, Ron Holden and the Playboys.
It was 1959. Holden was about 19; none of the other band mem-
bers were yet 18. "One night, I was out in the band car, smokin'
and drinkin' 1. W. Harper. The cops came by and I was arrested
for contributing to the delinquency of minors." He wound up
doing six months in the local jail. There he wrote his big hit,
"Love You So," whose lyrics started out as part of a letter he was
writing to his girlfriend. Sitting in his cell with nothing better to
do, Holden improvised a doo-wop melody to the poem.
"I came out and I had no band-the Playboys went off by
themselves. But my brothers, Oscar Jr. and Dave, were all-state
athletes and this sheriff's deputy, Larry Nelson, was a friend of
my brother David. He heard my 'letter' in jail and asked me to
come and see him. So I sang it for Larry and his wife, Mary. She
had this label, Nite Owl, with Chuck Margolis. She loved the
song, so Larry Nelson recorded it; he put together the Thunder-
birds for me to record it with."
According to what Holden told Steve Propes, it took a mar-
athon 20-hour recording session, disrupted by a barking dog and
56 LOUIE LOUiE
general lack of technical competence, to finally get the master
take, which was still crude, shaky on matters of pitch and tempo,
and filled with distortion (the saxophonist's major influence may
have been that barking dog). But with its pledge of "true love for
all eternity" and its ghostly melody (whose mildly dissonant or-
igins are in Little Bill and the Bluenotes' "I Love an Angel" of
the year before, and resurfaced four years later in 1. Frank Wil-
son's Top 10 "Last Kiss"), its clunky wood-block accents and its
rhumbafied rhythm, "Love You So" finally transcends ghastly to
become haunting.
Holden's vocal was the one part of the record that stood out
clear and strong. What he'd written encapsulated every awful
teen love song cliche, so much so that the song could have been
penned by a rock-hating parodist like Stan Freberg or Steve Al-
len as a gag. But it wasn't a gag, and that was the catch: These
bombastically corny lyrics were what every girl longed to hear
her guy say just before they leaped into the backseat-or maybe
those words said plainly what few guys had the guts to utter:
"Always remember, my love is true / No matter, what I may do /
You'll stay in this heart of mine / Until the very end of time."
"Love You So" doesn't swing or soar, but when a song has ex-
pressed the clumsy banalities at the heart of teen romance so
completely, it doesn't have to.
First the Northwest, then the nation responded: "It was a hit
in Seattle and then Bob Keen [of DonnaiDel-Fi Records in L.A.]
came in. Actually, a lot of record labels came in - Liberty, War-
ners. But they all said, well, we'll take the singer and do a five-
year development plan, but this record is a piece of shit," Holden
said. "They all wanted to know, what was this wildcat record
keeping their records from being # 1. Bob Keen was the only one
who came in and said, 'Here's some money. Let's go.' "
"Love You So" cracked Billboard's Top 10 in the summer of
1960, reaching #7, right alongside "Cathy's Clown" and "Alley-
Oop" and Elvis's "Stuck on You." It wasn't the first Seattle-area
rock hit. The Northwest had turned out a variety of good records
that were also strong sellers in recent years, the best of which
might have been the wimp-perfection of the Fleetwoods' "Come
Softly to Me" and "Mr. Blue," each of which hit #1 in 1959.
Among Northwest rock bands, the Wailers got there first with
57
the instrumentals "Tall Cool One" and "Mau Mau," followed
by the equally unsung Frantics with "Straight Flush," "Fog Cut-
ter," and "Werewolf." Little Bill and the Bluenotes finally made
it with a vocal, their self-penned sax-driven, nasal ballad, "I
Love an Angel." All these hit in 1959 and early 1960. "Love You
So" was one of the biggest, eclipsed by only the Ventures, who
hit #2 a few weeks later in that same summer with another gui-
tar-based instrumental, "Walk Don't Run."
If "Love You So" was neither first nor biggest among the
Northwest's first batch of rock hits, it was and is the most mythic,
the most inexplicable, the one record that could not have become
a hit except in an era where the virus of rock'n'roll was in the
street and poised to take over.
Nevertheless, even "Love You So" is not the most important
reason Ron Holden's name ought to be sung-well, at least
hummed-in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His accomplish-
ments include something far more significant than putting a
crude anthem of puppy love, no matter how definitive, into the
Top 10. For it was Ron Holden and the Playboys who introduced
the dormant "Louie Louie" to the Pacific Northwest.
The least surprising thing about Ron Holden's "Love You So"
was its Latin rhythm. Holden's bands always had an unconven-
tionallineup. "It was nothing like the structure of a band," he
said of the Playboys. The group had drums, piano, two horn
players, and Holden himself sitting on a stool (as Richard Berry
often did) with bongos between his knees, leaning forward into
the mike to sing. A rhythm and blues quintet with no bass (the
pianist added what bass the baritone sax did not supply with his
left hand) and no guitar would have been unorthodox even in
the pre-rock'n'roll jump-band R&B period, especially since the
Playboys' tenor and baritone saxes served as rhythm rather than
lead instruments.
The Playboys featured Johnny Francia (a Filipino-American,
like Richard Berry's pals, the Rillera brothers) on alto and tenor
saxes. But their most important member-in some ways eclips-
ing Holden himself by the singer's own account-was Carlos
Ward, who played baritone, alto, and tenor saxophone, flute and
"all woodwinds." It was Ward who taught Holden to play bon-
58 LOUIE LOUiE
gos; he later went to New York and became a co-founder of BT
Express, whose "Do It ('Til You're Satisfied)" and "Express"
were two of the mid-Seventies' biggest disco-funk hits.
Holden first heard "Louie Louie" on late-night R&B radio
programs in 1957 while it was still a hit, but it wasn't until well
into 1958 that he decided to perform it. "When I brought it to
rehearsal, Carlos knew exactly what to do to arrange it for our
sound."
Holden and the Playboys' "Louie" had a specific purpose.
Seattle/Tacoma's budding rock scene featured intra-city battles
of the bands. These would pit the Playboys in a face-off against
the Wailers, or the Wailers against the Frantics, or one of those
against Little Bill and the Bluenotes, or one of the dozens of
other new bands now cropping up.
The aim of local promoters may have been to pit the new
wave of rock bands against each other like so many low-level
club fighters. Sometimes it worked out that way: "They were
almost like gang wars-inasmuch as they were inter-city rival-
ries," setting bands from Seattle against those from Tacoma, the
way both Holden and Ormsby remembered it. But the bands
thrown into competition at ballrooms like Parker's, the Encore,
the Eagle, Tacoma's Crescent Ballroom, and the Spanish Cas-
tle-the jousting arena between the two biggest towns-failed to
feud. Instead, those groups "became a fraternity that will last
until we die because we went through so much together as bud-
ding rock'n'rollers," as Holden put it.
"The records gave people the idea that, gee, these people are
growing-maybe we can do this too," said Ormsby. "So there
were other little bands startin' to sprout here and there. To me,
it started to create a healthier scene. And the Wailers were sorta
the hub of that. Because with a hit record right out of the chute,
it just gave people incentive-God, we can do that too.
"And these shows where like Little Bill and the Bluenotes
and the Wailers would get together, that's a pretty powerful im-
pact, you know, on people growing up, learning to play instru-
ments or just being awed by the fact that anybody could get up
there and actually do that, with these little tiny amps. Sometimes
you'd have two guitars plugged into one amp-I mean, that was
the way it was." It boiled down to a brotherhood of musicians,
59
one that leaked out into the audience, for sure, but whose basic
solidarity was on the bandstand itself.
This brotherhood encompassed not only the big-time bands
but dozens that never hit the charts and would be forgotten ex-
cept for collectors. Or except for the fact that one or another of
such a lost band's members-for instance, Larry Coryell of the
Dynamics and the Checkers, or Jimi Hendrix of the Rocking
Kings-went on to careers outside the Northwest, in the big-time
music world that believed (in its predictable ignorance of its own
origins) it had nothing to do with the territory up around Puget
Sound.
In that world inhabited by the music business, rock'n'roll
wasn't even an issue; rock faltered and "died" in 1959 and 1960.
You probably know the autopsy findings: Elvis went into the
Army, Chuck Berry was sent to jail, Little Richard sent himself
back to church, Jerry Lee Lewis was banned for marrying his
13-year-old cousin, the plane carrying Buddy Holly and Ritchie
Valens and the Big Bopper went down, and (perhaps most dam-
aging of all) Alan Freed and a host of other deejays were ruined
in the payola scandal. So the Big Beat ceased to dominate the
airwaves-until 1964, when the Beatles and the blessed British
Invasion arrived.
It didn't happen that way. Don't take my word for it. Ask
Berry Gordy and the gang at Motown. Ask the Beach Boys. Ask
the Four Seasons. Or trust the ghost of Casey Stengel, and get
off your own lazy butt and go ahead and look it up. The facts are
right there in the charts. The post-plane-crash hits of 1959-
1963 included "Stagger Lee," "Kansas City," "Only the
Lonely," "Quarter to Three," "Heat Wave," "What'd I Say,"
"Da Doo Ron Ron," "The Wanderer," "Shout," "Party Lights,"
"He's So Fine," "Duke of Earl," "Stay," "Surfin' U.S.A.,"
"Blue Moon," "Hit the Road, Jack," "Do You Love Me,"
"Green Onions," "Wipe Out," "The Loco-Motion" ... and
that's without dipping below the Top 10 or including any post-
humous smashes for Buddy and his brethren, or any of the ab-
sentee best-sellers copped by Elvis and Chuck and Richard or,
for that matter, any disc whose tempo is less than indisputably
rockin'. In places like Motown or the Pacific Northwest, beat
music still kicked hard as ever.
60 LOUIE LOUiE
Rock'n'roll didn't roll over and die in those dismal days when
it was supposedly ruled by pompadoured pinheads named
Bobby. That may have been what the serge-suited record and
radio executives of America hoped had happened; it may have
been the result that the united martinet vice-principals of U.S.
education prayed for. But in reality, the music prospered and
took on new forms.
The teenage rock bands of the Pacific Northwest built a great
lost rock'n'roll scene in those years when the Big Beat wandered
in the wilderness and, not only that, without the help of a single
Brit, they created one of the first great modern rock scenes, one
in which spirit and community were central for both musicians
and audiences.
The dancers on the floor and the players on the stage came
to enact a ritual to the call of duh duh duh. duh duh, taking their
cues spontaneously from one another's dances and postures.
Nothing mystical about it (necessarily); perhaps they were doing
nothing more than trying on gestures that might give some lift
to the lives they were leading at school. And maybe afterward,
when it turned out that high school never ended, that the hall-
way hierachies and locker-room bullying only got worse in col-
lege and at work, maybe duh duh duh. duh duh was what they
heard while they dreamed of a way out. And maybe some of
them, deciding that enough was enough, simply danced to duh
duh duh. duh duh and duh duh duh. duh duh and duh duh duh.
duh duh again for all their days. Maybe it was just that and noth-
mgmore.
Or invent your own explanation. But much as many hated it,
rock'n'roll did not die and, somehow, duh duh duh. duh duh was
at the heart of why it could not be stamped out.
At the battles of the bands, Ron Holden said, the hip kids did
the dirty boogie and the bop, competing for a prize. "The real
cool ones knew a dance called the chalypso," in which the cha-
cha met the calypso. "It was minus two steps from the cha-cha:
1-2-3, 4 instead of 1-2-3, 4-5. I gave them the perfect song for
chalypso - 'Louie Louie.' That was my battle of the bands song.
It gave us victories because it crossed all lines with its rhythmic
pattern and its sensuous beat and the message that it sent."
61
Holden, no stranger to myth himself ("I did the originallyr-
ics, did it as a love song," said the author ofthe world's corniest
love lyric as if "Louie" really had some other set of words to
sing), knew how to milk the drama from Richard Berry's lines:
"I sat on a chair, with the bongos between my knees and bent
into the mike and sang [ultra softly], 'duh duh duh. duh duh, duh
duh duh. duh duh.'
"Mter a while, all the other bands picked it up: Little Bill
and the Bluenotes, the Wailers, the Frantics, Tiny Tony and the
Statics, Merilee and the Turnabouts. And the rivalry became
broader and bigger, especially with the development of the Wail-
ers, and especially when the Wailers got Gail Harris and Rockin'
Robin Roberts."
Holden, though, went off to Los Angeles soon after "Love
You So" and remained there, emceeing oldies shows like Dick
Clark's twice-annual events and working for the oldies deejay
Art Laboe at his annual Ritchie Valens Memorial Dances at El
Monte Legion Stadium.
With Holden out of town, "Louie Louie" went up for grabs.
Every band in the area played it. Crowds loved it, often demand-
ing to hear it several times a night. But nobody owned it. It was
just a song that "everybody" -the Wailers, the Bluenotes, the
Frantics, and the new bands that sprang up in the wake of their
success-played, like a Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry song. In
fact, a lot of people say that it was the Frantics who did the best
version of the Richard BerrylRon Holden arrangement.
The Bluenotes split up. Mter "I Love an Angel," there were
no more hits and Little Bill headed out of town with a road band.
Rockin' Robin and Buck held the group together only a few
months.
The Wailers had also failed to continue the streak begun by
"Tall Cool One" and "Mau Mau." Their lineup needed an over-
haul and it seemed logical to look to their only significant Ta-
coma rivals for new parts. Mter all, Orsmby pointed out, the two
groups had often swapped personnel: "The Bluenotes would
open for an artist like, say, James Brown. And after our slot in
that show was over, 1'd go out and sit in with the Wailers for the
last half of their night. Sometimes 1'd start with them and then
62 LOUIE LOUiE
I'd leave and go play with the Bluenotes, however it worked out.
It didn't happen every night but as often as I could."
In late 1959 or early 1960, after the departure of John Greek,
one of the group's original guitarists, Buck became the Wailers'
full-time bassist. Around the same time, Rockin' Robin started
singing with them, although he was only one of three vocalists
(the others were the Orbisonesque Morrill and the extremely
teenage belter Gail Harris, whom Buck remembered as "a 13-
year-old white girl screaming rhythm and blues rave-ups").
Rock shows proliferated throughout the Northwest from local
gigs down to Portland, Oregon, and through the Cascades, west
to Boise, Idaho, and east to Wenatchee. The Wailers and their
mates and imitators played in hamburger stand parking lots and
on the rooftops of drive-in theatre concession stands. They
played to preppy high school kids and grease balls in car clubs,
to servicemen barely ready to shave and workers spoiling for a
new kind of honky tonk, every weekend and all through the
week once school let out.
The toughest crowds came from the car clubs, groups like the
Stompers or the Roman Wheels, who weren't the low-riders of
East Los Angeles but, Ormsby remembered, "a bunch of people
in hot cars, drinkin' beer, havin' a good time, goin' out to dances.
And they all had these real hot cars and they'd go toolin' around.
Fifty of 'em would show up at a drive-in restaurant after the
dance." But even they weren't that rowdy. "You could pack 2,000
of those people in there and maybe have one fight," he said. But
the car clubs were only the edge of a scene whose emotional
essence one observer described as "a rough, remote cool." You
could feel it in the music, which was wired with trebly electric
energy.
Though their hit record made them regional stars, the Wail-
ers still toured like the small-time show band they were. "I
couldn't believe how we'd get all of our equipment and five or
six guys in a four-door 1948 Chevy. This was a regular auto, just
a car. And nothing on top, unless we had a couple of bags; then
we'd get one of those baskets, we'd put our suitcases on top, and
the car would sit about one inch off the ground, you know," said
Ormsby. "Then I remember we got a van, a Ford van, one of the
63
first ones, you know, those little square boxes, to haul our equip-
ment in."
Seattle hadn't yet built its freeways, so if they had a gig in
Bellingham, up at the north end of Puget Sound, it meant going
straight up Highway 99, past the Spanish Castle and radio sta-
tion KOL (where "Tall Cool One" broke), traveling two-lane
blacktop through dense traffic and tons of small towns, hitting
stop lights all the way, so that a trip that might take two hours
today could be accomplished only by leaving at 3:30 in order to
arrive by 8:30 and set up for a show that began just after 9. Five
hours to go a little more than a hundred miles, then "Just set up
and go - that was before the union thing" - seems so primitive
by today's standards that the Wailers might as well have been
moving around by Conestoga wagon. To prepare themselves,
they practiced in garages in their little working-class neighbor-
hoods of single-family one-story frame bungalows on small city-
size lots.
The group's sound equipment was as primitive as its trans-
portation and rehearsal space. They had "two mikes running
through an amp-like little contact mikes. And we never had
any PA system. So a little later when we played for 2,000 people
with a Bassman four-speaker amp and maybe a Standell with
two 12s [12-inch speakers] in it, it was loud. It was. And maybe
a Bogen amplifier with two University horn speakers. They were
big metal horns with drivers on the back-that was our P.A.
amp.
"It was real funny because, the way people play today, it's real
loud. Then you could create energy just with not a whole lotta
sound. It was electricity, you know, it was energy. And you just
learned how to do it. It wasn't power because it wasn't any pow-
erful amps. It depended on how you played it and how you mixed
yourself. Jazz guys did the same thing, how they worked off each
other. So it was a real good way to learn how to create that energy
because you never really had anything that was distracting you
or giving you a false impression of how you were really mixed in
with the band. I mean you actually had to do it to get the
strength. "
The kids "didn't know where we got the material from," said
Ormsby. "It was white boys playin' black music. And doin' it real
6q
LOUIE LOUiE
good. You know, fusing. You know, the idea of what people
thought white music was. Because they really didn't know. I al-
ways thought that maybe Dick Clark just fed people a lotta mu-
sic. Chubby Checker doing 'The Twist' -that was really Hank
Ballard and the Midnighters. Or Pat Boone doing Fats Domino.
And that's what white people thought it was. But when they
heard us do our own versions of those songs they went, 'Holy
mackerel! Where'd this come from?' "
Now younger kids turned up regularly, and not all of them
on the fringes of teenage society by any means, though the music
was still just outlaw enough, with the bands onstage not only
cranking out beat, but doing steps, putting on an R&B-style
show, not laying back cool like jazzbos, but not yet immersed in
the T-shirt and Levis anti-fashion of hippie bohemia either.
"There'd be carloads of kids coming. It was okay then to go to a
dance if you were 15 and 16. 'Cept that parents weren't really
approving of it. 'Cause it was still the devil's music," said
Ormsby. "I mean, we were still kinda straight-Iookin' guys. We
wore suits. We all dressed alike-had uniforms, sort of, but they
were normal suits. We wore ties and stuff. I look at pictures of
the Beatles and they got the same drift goin', y'know?"
Had the music business been paying attention, the Northwest
scene might have exploded or, at least, its talent might have
found a national showcase. Had labels like the Wailers' New
York-based Golden Crest or the Bluenotes and Fleetwoods' lo-
cally-owned Dolphin (later Dolton) possessed either vision or
development capital, the whole story might have turned out dif-
ferently. Or maybe if some sharp-eyed promoter with a sense of
what all this weekend furor portended had turned up, the whole
Northwest scene would have burned itself out in six months, and
all that talent and energy would have gone to a fate more tawdry
than the mere obscurity that awaited it. But one way or another,
the verve and invention that bands like the Wailers possessed
were displayed in isolation. Records leaked out and, because no-
body thought of a "career," because the record label was on to
the next good sound or the guitarist's girlfriend wanted to get
hitched and settle down or the Army drafted the drummer, the
show stopped.
By the end of 1960 the Wailers were through with Golden
65
Crest, a label to which their connection had never been more
than third-hand anyway. As Kent Morrill told Lisa Lancaster-
Barker of Goldmine magazine, the Wailers had been together
only about three months when they acquired a manager named
Art Mineo (the uncle of actor Sal Mineo). Mineo put them in
touch with some recording industry types from New York.
"I don't know who they were; they were like mini-mafia, or
something. Anyway, this guy flies out at 2:00 A.M. to the Knights
of Columbus hall with a tape recorder. He set up a microphone
on a 12-foot stand, pointed at the stage, and said, 'Play.' " The
group played its regular set: a couple of original tunes - "Tall
Cool One" and "Dirty Robber" -and rock'n'roll standards like
Bo Diddley's "Roadrunner" and Little Richard's "Lucille."
"The guy then turned off the machine, went back to New York,
and about three or four weeks later we had a hit record." (Ac-
cording to a bill reproduced in Dan Rogers' Dance Halls, Teen
Fairs and Armories, a history of Pacific Northwest rock, the group
first recorded "Scotch on the Rocks" [a/k/a "Tall Cool One"] on
August 28, 1958, at Commercial Recorders in Seattle during a
two-and-a-half-hour session that cost $64.30. But maybe that
was just a demo date- "Tall Cool One" didn't chart until the
following May.)
"We honestly didn't know any better. We thought that's how
you did it .... We got a call from Dick Clark in Philadelphia,
and he said, 'You boys come out and be on my show.' So we went
out and bought a Plymouth station wagon and drove to Phila-
delphia, did the show, toured for two months. We were like the
Three Stooges; we didn't know what we were doing. We were
missing half our gigs."
Then "Mau Mau" was pushed out as the group's second sin-
gle, at the insistence of guitarist John Greek, the group's nomi-
nalleader. The rest of the band wanted to put out "Dirty Rob-
ber," which featured a Morrill vocal. "Mau Mau" made the
charts, but then stations in Chicago banned it because of the
title. That was the end of John Greek and the beginning of Buck
Ormsby's Wailers' tenure. By late 1960, the Wailers had re-
nounced their contract with Golden Crest (most of the band
members were only 16 years old when it was signed) and had
begun looking around for a new opportunity.
66 LOUIE LOUiE
Buck was anything but overawed by what he'd seen of Bob
Reisdorff's locally-based Dolphin/Dolton operation as a mem-
ber of the Bluenotes; the Wailers all knew the labels in New York
and L.A. just hustled bands out of their money. So Ormsby con-
vinced Kent Morrill and Rockin' Robin that they should start
their own record company, and the three of them formed Eti-
quette Records, which consisted of not much more than a hand-
shake among themselves and a red and black label logo. To
make it more, they needed another Wailers hit. Casting about
for material, they heard the siren call of duh duh duh. duh duh.
The myth has it that Rockin' Robin Roberts discovered "Louie
Louie" in a bargain bin, the place where old records, hits and
nonhits alike, go to be scooped up by those infested with the
vinyl collector bug at a fraction of their true worth, presuming
they're worth anything at all. If Rockin' Robin came by his per-
sonal copy of Richard Berry and the Pharoahs' greatest musical
moment so haphazardly, though, he knew what he was buying
the instant he read the label.
The Wailers definitely had a copy of the Richard Berry rec-
ord, because even though other bands around town played it,
once Holden left, nobody was sure exactly how "Louie Louie"
went. "Robin was really aware of it," according to Buck, "but he
needed to know the lyrics, because nobody really knew what the
lyrics were. So he went and got the real lyrics off a record."
Until Rockin' Robin went to work on it, "Louie Louie" was
a laid-back song with a story to tell. The versions by Richard
Berry and Holden and even the Frantics have not much more in
common with the "Louie" loved and loathed today than chords
and syllables. Mter Roberts and guitarist Rich Dangel spent a
couple of afternoons rearranging it, every lick and lyric meant
something drastically different. In a sense, the song born at the
Harmony Park Ballroom didn't fully spring to life until Roberts
and Dangel found the true madness lurking inside it.
Their new arrangement toughened the song, stiffened the
rhythm, attacked every beat. The languid Latinisms of Berry and
Holden vanished, and "Louie" immediately felt faster (though
it wasn't) and harder. In short, it rocked more.
The Wailers' "Louie Louie" opened with a honking sax
67
bleating duh duh duh. duh duh, then said it again with backing
by the guitar. At that point, Rockin' Robin arrived. His timbre
matched precisely the shrillness of a wood rasp on steel, his in-
tonation infused that poor Jamaican tar with breathless desper-
ation, his phrasing groped for every word and having found it,
nearly bit it in half. What Rockin' Robin Roberts sounds like on
the Wailers' "Louie Louie" is nothing less than a guy who really
does see that Jamaican moon above while sailing all alone for
three nights and days without respite, who really can see and
smell the one he loves, no matter the distance. In other words,
somebody who's telling this story because his life depends on
how it turns out, a man willing to do just about anything to see
that it has a happy ending in which he holds that girl (and for
the first time, you have to wonder, what's her name if she's so
all-fired important?) and promises he'll never leave again (even
though he must know he can't possibly be telling the truth unless
he plans to leave the sea). Rockin' Robin Roberts and his band-
mates understood the story of "Louie" as it might have applied
to them: It was a song about a man crazed by hot pants and
maddened with itching desire.
To drive the point home, as he came to the end of the second
verse and approached the song's bridge, Rockin' Robin raised
his squeak-perfecto voice to the point where you thought it was
going to run out of hormones and break completely, and uttered
for the very first time in human history a line heard 'round the
world:
"Let's Give It to 'Em, Right Now!"
At that moment Rockin' Robin Roberts entered the lists of
true rock'n'roll immortals, as sure as the guy who convinced
Leiber and Stoller that it was better to write a song about a
hound dog than a stray cat, as definitely as whoever told Little
Richard to sing about tutti-frutti rather than Neapolitan. His cry
is pure inspiration-"Let's give it to 'em, right now" yowled
breathlessly and, what's more (and better), totally out of context.
Here the guy goes singing about lost love and separation from
home and, all of a sudden, his misty remorse and nostalgia cur-
dles into a cry for vengeance: "Let's give it to 'em, right now."
68 LOUIE LOUiE
Richard Berry never thought of inserting that line because it
had nothing to do with what he was singing about. But Berry
and his Pharoahs told a fictional story, and Rockin' Robin Rob-
erts and the Wailers were spilling their guts.
Give' em what? Rich Dangel knew and he gave it to 'em be-
fore Rockin' Robin's yelp had faded: a guitar solo that raced
pulses in its simple emblematic urgency, ripping the cover off
that cool chalypso before returning to the glories of duh duh duh.
duh duh.
In that swift interpolation, Rockin' Robin Roberts did way
more than breathe new life into "Louie Louie." He made it a
song that everybody who'd claim it without nicknaming it had to
know. It's too mystical to say that the Wailers' "Louie" made the
Kingsmen's version inevitable-or maybe not mystical enough,
since inevitability suggests that there are no miracles - but they
did more than prepare the way.
All this took place on stage long before it took place on record.
But the crowds immediately let the Wailers know that their new
"Louie Louie" was beyond the common currency of dance
songs. They'd invented-or stumbled across, or been given by
the Muses - an anthem.
"Louie Louie," released as by Rockin' Robin Roberts
(though everyone referred to it as the Wailers' version), didn't
exactly explode on Seattle radio, but it got airplay there-and
down in Portland - and it claimed a place on jukeboxes across
the region. It made enough noise for Liberty Records to reissue
it.
Cashbox gave it a B + , commenting, "Fine blues vocal by the
songster on a catchy ditty that was an awhile-back success by
cleffer Richard Berry (his reading is available again on the Flip
label). Roberts receives striking combo support. Date could move
again in R&B-pop circles."
According to a local Seattle newspaper many years later,
"The company explained to Buck that it was one thing to have
their promo men going to radio stations pushing Bobby Vee's
latest hit, but they were simply afraid of going in there with
something as raw and wild as 'Louie Louie.' " Further evidence
to Buck and the boys that starting their own company wasn't a
69
luxury but a necessity. So the Wailers returned to the circuit play-
ing professionally-meaning full-time, without day jobs-but
abandoning much hope of hitting the big time.
Their shows were legitimately legendary in the sense that
dozens of people eagerly told stories about them decades later.
The shows at the Spanish Castle became mythic, especially after
Jimi Hendrix (a Castle regular who always came prepared with
guitar and spare amp in case the headliners would give him a
chance to sit in) wrote about the place in "Spanish Castle
Magic" (and, if you ask me, in "Castles Made of the Sand"
about the joint's demise).
"It was but one of many old ballrooms on the NW circuit,
like Parker's, Lake Hills, and the Crescent; but the Castle was
the place to play," wrote Art Chantry twenty years later, in the
Rocket, Seattle's music magazine. "In the daytime it looked like
a cartoon version of a medieval fortress that stood for decades as
a roadside attraction on old Highway 99. But at night it trans-
formed into a classic nite spot/dance palace offering big bands,
R&B, blues, jazz, and the main staple of country westernJfolk
dancing."
Seattle native Keith Abbott gave the best description of the
faded pink-and-white Castle in his short story "Spanish Castle,"
collected in The First Thing Coming (Coffee House Press, 1987):
"Surrounded by marshland, blackberry brambles, and swamp
alder, its name came from the false front of notched parapets
and a square tower. On top of that tower sat a smaller tower with
a flagpole. Originally a club for swing bands, Spanish Castle
changed briefly into a roller rink, then evolved into a country
and western beer joint, before it was ruined enough to finish its
days as a rock'n'roll dance hall. Once rock'n'roll dances moved
in, a cyclone fence was built from the northeast corner out to the
highway embankment to cut off any hot-rod traffic and prevent
drive-by bottle throwing or any other hoodlum routines," Abbott
wrote. "Over the front entrance the marquee sported a neon sign
with Spanish Castle written in loopy flowing green letters under-
lined by two yellow bars. Sections of the neon tubes were burnt
out. A skeleton frame for a canvas canopy stood over the side-
walk leading into the foyer. A few frayed pieces of black and
white canvas hung down from the top of the frame's spine. In
70 LOUIE LOUiE
front a dirty strip of canvas remained, with the words New
Mangemen in red, the letters a and t hidden under triangular
strips of ripped canvas."
You could cram maybe two thousand kids into the Spanish
Castle, and for especially important gigs, the owners did. By
1961 the Wailers were so identified with the place, they decided
to turn it into a recording studio: "It was the legendary gig, that
was it, the Spanish Castle. You couldn't record an album and
call it the Castle, unless you recorded it at the Castle. So that's
what we did." Thus The Fabulous Wailers Live at the Castle, Eti-
quette's first LP release and one of the wildest sessions of its era,
rock'n'roll flat out and unadulterated, featuring all the group's
hits and misses, not-needless to say-omitting the siren thump
of duh duh duh. duh duh. The album is a true document, no
matter how much of it might be overdubbed: a great band abso-
lutely in its element, a championship team playing a home
game.
But that album was about the crest for the Wailers, for the
Castle, and for the Seattle part of the Northwest's Sixties scene.
The Wailers made no noise outside of the Northwest; by 1963 or
so Rockin' Robin had left the group and gone down to San Fran-
cisco to ply his trade as a chemist. Ormsby, Dangel, and Morrill
kept the Wailers and Etiquette going, but about the time that
Robin left town, Buck discovered a new gaggle of Tacoma kids
called the Sonics, who picked up where "Louie Louie" left off
and made great garage-punk music. It was all two chords and a
cloud of dust with a great raucous "Louie Louie" thrown in and
an even more shattering take of "Have Love, Will Travel." But
even the Sonics never broke out of the Northwest.
No band from that Seattle/Tacoma circuit did. Ormsby
blames the area's lack of a powerhouse entrepreneur. "There
were chances to be like Bill Graham and Dick Clark here for
some people. They had gold in their hands and they didn't take
advantage of it. Neither did the bands. I mean everybody had an
opportunity and . . . they weren't thinking big enough. And
when they did think big, it was when the Beatles or the English
came in and they thought 'That's where we're going to make our
money. Let's go for it.' "
At best, that's partially what happened. The biggest reason
71
Seattle rock wasn't mass merchandised stemmed from its con-
tent. Listening to the Wailers, the Sonics, the Frantics, and the
rest involved direct and dangerous encounters with madness,
poison, the edge of criminal lunacy. The best Seattle records
sound like they were made by people involved in an occult rit-
ual-in short, they appear as a prophecy of nineties grunge.
Song titles like "The Witch," "Strychnine," "Shanghaied,"
"Out of My Tree," and "Mind Disaster" suggest the terrain,
borne out in the music-huge distorted guitar, voices that
sounded like they'd been chemically abraded just before the tape
started, rhythms that careened with all the discipline of a hyper-
thyroid metabolism. Most likely, Liberty couldn't sell "Louie
Louie" because it frightened them, and some fans of Pacific
Northwest rock swear that stacked up against the area's truly
wild discs, the Wailers' "Louie" sounds wimpy. When you saw
these bands onstage or met them in your record company or
radio station office, the impression just grew stronger. Hell, the
Etiquette Christmas album contained songs as goofy-furious as
the Sonics' "Don't Believe in Christmas," and maybe those guys
thought it was a gigantic joke (obviously, they did) but if you
didn't share their particular sensibility, it must have seemed like
a threat. It didn't matter much. Northwest rockers adopted the
attitude of all rebel rock cults: If you get it, great. And if you
don't, fuck off. Maybe you could merchandise that some day-
Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" proved you could-but not
in 1963 or even 1965.
The irony is that this singular scene crashed in trendiness.
On the numerous reissue albums of early Sixties Northwest rock,
the pre-1964 playing is distinctive in its energy and the way that
the groups balance guitar noise and soulfulness. Mter the British
Invasion and the advent of the Dylanesque, Seattle/Tacoma
wasn't that different from other places in the Midwest and the
Southwest that had large but derivative garage-band scenes.
The city eventually tore the Castle down. Legend has it that
it happened after six kids were killed one Friday night doing 80
mph on Old 99, which had become known as the "Bucket of
Blood." Drunk out of their skulls, they turned left into the on-
coming traffic, sealing their fate and the Castle's.
"It was a classic building. Perfect," said Ormsby mournfully
72 LOUIE LOUiE
as he drove past the site one day in 1990. "But then, wood build-
ings get old if you don't take care of them, if there's not any
activity going on. People are still sick about that. It shoulda been
a landmark." The place is now a parking lot in what's called
Federal Way, the remaining part of Old 99 that runs alongside
Interstate 5.
The Wailers hung on through the early psychedelic era,
though the membership changed many times. In 1968 they
headed to Hollywood "for one last shot," as Morrill put it, and
when that petered out, they split for good. "We were used to
having the semi-star treatment in the Northwest, and in Holly-
wood we couldn't get arrested," Morrill told Lancaster-Barker.
Buck stayed in Seattle, still trying to get the area's musicians
the respect they deserved, still struggling to bring his rock'n'roll
dream to life. Dangel never left either, except for some road
work here and there. He played in three or four club bands to
make his living. Morrill split, did some studio production work,
and made a couple of solo albums in Los Angeles, then went to
Vegas and began doing a very well-regarded Roy Orbison "trib-
ute" show that cashed in on their close visual/verbal resem-
blance.
Maybe it would all have turned out differently if Rockin'
Robin had stuck around. But he stayed in San Francisco, and in
1966 he was riding with a woman who somehow managed to get
on the freeway going the wrong way. Roberts was killed instantly,
dying without honor except among those who keep their mem-
ories in the grooves.
6
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'---1--_ ....... he Wailers' "Louie Louie" is a full immersion
in rock'n'roll possibility. It's as if Rockin' Robin
had discovered in some musty backroom at the
university library a passage from the gnostic
Gospel of Thomas that brought him close to the holy heartbeat
of his music:
Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you
bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within
you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
And so rather than risk self-destruction, Rockin' Robin and his
band just poured it all out: "Let's give it to 'em, right now!"
While we cannot say that the Wailers and their fans were saved
73
LOUIE LOUiE
truly and eternally by means of sacred duh duh duh. duh duh,
it's undeniable that in the moment of playing and listening to
this song they were free. Undeniable because this freedom is a
gift they and "Louie Louie" offer to every listener or, at least,
every listener who, upon hearing the magical incantation "Let's
give it to 'em, right now," is willing to open a heart and not ask
too damn many questions. For, after all, if it is details connected
that add up to Secrets, details too long examined tend to extin-
guish Mystery, and without mystery, without duh duh duh. duh
duh, there is no secret left.
"Louie Louie" made Richard Berry feel proud as a matter of
craftsmanship and guile: He had written a good song, one that
used unlikely elements, like calypso and cha-cha, and it had
been - at least, on a small scale - a commercial and popular suc-
cess, furthering his career goals. If it made him feel a better,
more successful person, that was a pleasant by-product. But any
such emotion had absolutely nothing to do with the content of
the song. Nor did anyone who heard the original "Louie Louie"
extract such emotion from it. There was no need to cry "Let's
give it to 'em, right now." The essential mystery at the song's
heart remained unsuspected and thus unconnected.
What becomes clear in listening to The Fabulous Wailers Live
at the Castle is that Rockin' Robin Roberts and his merry men
transmuted Berry's song so radically in part because they did put
such personal feelings into their music. For the Wailers, as for so
many up-and -coming rock bands of the early sixties (not exclud-
ing the Beatles of Hamburg and Liverpool), expressing and ex-
ploring these emotions was central to the rock'n'roll experience.
The Wailers weren't alone, even in Seattle, where the Frantics
were making records whose very titles now feel psychotropic.
Out in Detroit none other than Berry Gordy, auteur of the cyni-
cal "Money," would also write: "Do you love me / Now that I can
dance?" -which may be the clearest expression ever penned of
the theology behind "Louie Louie." And all that the Wailers (or
the Contours or anybody else who got down to the root of the
issue) simply suggested, the Kingsmen drove home.
It would be dangerous to be too definite about where this
new kind of rock'n'roll spirit originated. Maybe it came from the
bandstand, maybe from the crowd, maybe from what the musi-
75
cians, singers, and songwriters were putting into their music,
maybe from what the audience started feeding back. Certainly,
a big part of it came from the times themselves, from the atmo-
sphere that spawned the civil rights movement and the planned
obsolesence of cherished totems, from the first blush of elec-
tronic media frenzy and the total crackdown of the McCarthyite
Red scare, the thrill of space exploration, and the ecosocial ca-
tastrophe of military-industrial expansionism. One way or an-
other, the command "Let's give it to 'em, right now!" was heard
and obeyed throughout that great beleaguered time.
It's easy-and fun!-to spin theories about what was happen-
ing in those days of supposed innocence. Doc Pelzel, a high
priest of "Louie," once told the Wall Street J o u r n a ~ "Everything
had been so, shall we say, straight. Any hint of something raw
and possibly obscene was eagerly glommed upon by the post-
war baby-boomers who were just getting into their pre-pubes-
cent period."
There is a dryly factual and not altogether inaccurate way of
looking at why this happened. Robert C. Toll discusses it in The
Entertainment Machine: "The record business was the first of the
new media to target its entertainment to specific groups. Records
combined the economy of mass production and national distri-
bution with great flexibility because they were designed to be
bought and played by individuals. Like sheet music-but unlike
stage, radio, or movies-recordings were essentially consumer
goods that could be produced in great variety and marketed se-
lectively to people who controlled their use. Unlike movies and
network radio, then, the record business could continue to ap-
peal to the general pop audience as its major market while at the
same time producing entertainment for limited special-interest
groups."
But that's too drab and sociological for even a materialistic
fool such as 1. Those cold facts-all true, all irrelevant-just do
not come close to what I feel about it; and not because I know,
but because I don't know, you don't know, the people who were
doing it at the time couldn't know. In a way, it's important that
the answer never be spoken, lest such an essential and essen-
tially hopeful miracle be perverted and sold back as a shell of
itself. Breweries and sneaker manufacturers can buy rock'n'roll,
76 LOUIE LOUiE
wine cooler companies can pay big bucks to use "Louie Louie"
its own bad self; but until science becomes truly, totally and ir-
retrievably evil, none of 'em will ever be able to cry with the
requisite openess of spirit, "Let's give it to 'em, right now!"
I say this not to summarize, but because this is the last ripe
moment to pause and reflect: What happened next, thanks to
the Kingsmen and that great Irish Catholic secret society, the
FBI, took "Louie Louie" into another dimension entirely. It
went from mystery to mystique, from fable to fantasy, from a
song that captured-no matter how-the force of its moment to
a song whose legend discorporated the facts of its birth and up-
bringing.
In this context you could say that the "Louie Louie"myth
took shape and blew the lid off the show-biz structure at just the
moment when one of Toll's special-interest groups achieved a
position of such dominance that it could sneer at anybody who
didn't grasp its jargon, no matter how high and mighty that per-
son might be. Neither the Governor of Indiana nor Richard Berry
"got" the Secret of "Louie Louie," because neither of them
spoke the new crowd's special, somewhat sneering, esoteric lan-
guage. On the other hand, every random, apparently dimwit
bobby-soxer who wandered half-lit into the Spanish Castle on a
Friday night grasped it completely.
But then, the language of duh duh duh. duh duh is booby-
trapped, always revealing more than is ever intended. Here is
Geoffrey Stokes writing the sixties portion of Rock of Ages: The
Rolling Stone Histo1Y of Rock'n'Roll in 1986:
It's almost embarrassing to speak of "significance" in any discus-
sion of "Louie Louie, "for the song surely resists learned exegesis.
It did, however illustrate a significant music industry trend that
the coming rock hegemony would nearly erase: the discovery
and national licensing of regional hits .... When the economic
orientation of the industry subsequently changed from singles
to albums-and when one group could mean tens of millions of
dollars of income-the licensing system faded away, emerging
again in modified form only in the days of American punk. [my
emphasis]
Everything in that quote is pretty much true (except that it was
disco, not punk, that provided the vehicle for licensing's re-
77
emergence-but then you, or at least I, wouldn't expect Rolling
Stone's version of musical history to get that part right), but it is
also rendered totally and era shingly irrelevant by the revelation
that Stokes is embarrassed by "Louie Louie" and its claim to sig-
nificance, which means (to put it bluntly) that he (and his version
of history) is out of touch with the only question that matters.
Because even though you might think so, given the amounts of
cash and crassness involved, rock'n'roll isn't about marketing. If
that's what you want to talk about, shoes or sour cream offer far
more useful general cases. Rock 'n' roll-the whole damn "Let's
give it to 'em, right now!" shebang-is about something else:
The mystery of why items like "Louie Louie" (call them totems,
call them trash) are learning's true reward.
Anyway, in the world shaped by the academic study of the
magic and majesty of duh duh duh. duh duh, "Louie Louie" and
stuff of that nature has become the most appropriate vehicle for
learned exegesis (which is part of why that world sucks).
Consider University of Florida professor of film studies Rob-
ert B. Ray, who also serves as songwriter and vocalist of the Vul-
gar Boatmen, a much-beloved rock group of the late 1980s. The
last thing one would say of Professor (or even guitarist) Ray is
that he is anything so debauched as a "rock critic," and yet in
"The ABC of Visual Theory," "an encyclopedic essay describing
the inter-relations between typography, language, and thought,
[which] connects the 'paraphernalia of the text' with every cul-
tural association which can be brought to bear on these prac-
tices," published in the rarefied academic journal Visible Lan-
guage, Vol. XXII No.4 (Autumn 1988), we find, as entry "L":
"Louie, Louie" The Kingsmen's 1963 hit version depended
enormously on the evasion of printing. By not reproducing the
lyrics on either single or album cover, the group ensured that a
confused but imaginative listener would hear as vaguely sala-
cious what in fact was a clumsy attempt to imitate Calypso's
pidgin English ("Me catch the ship across the sea"). In doing
so, the band had intuited a classic strategy of all intellectual
vanguards: the use oftantalizing mystification. Lacan's "Imag-
inary" and "Symbolic," "the mirror stage," "The unconscious
is structured like a language"; Derrida's "deconstruction,"
"grammatology," "differance," "There is no outside the text,"
78 LOUIE LOUiE
etc. -these terms and phrases, while committed to writing, re-
mained elusive, inchoate, quasi-oral charms. As such they en-
ticed, beckoned, fostered work. Lacan explicitly pointed to the
paradox: at one moment in his year-long seminar on "The Pur-
loined Letter," knowing full well that almost no one in the enor-
mous lecture hall had actually read Poe's story (for, by that time,
Lacan himself had become a celebrity, provoking curiosity
among many people who had little interest in his subject mat-
ter), he turned and addressed his audience:
We find ourselves before this singular contradiction - I
don't know if it should be called dialectical-that the less
you understand, the better you listen. For I often say to
you very difficult things, and I see you hanging on my
every word, and I learn later that you did not understand.
On the other hand, when one tells you simple things,
almost too familiar, you are less attentive. I just make this
remark in passing, which has its interest like any con-
crete observation. I leave it for your meditation.
My own meditation tells me that what Ray's claiming is
mostly hogwash and that the Kingsmen, in particular, had about
as much in common with anybody's vanguard as did the first
lounge singer to use a synthesizer because he didn't want to pay
a drummer (quite a bit less, come to think of it), but that's hardly
the point. The point is that Ray is not embarrassed. Not at all.
And that his lack of embarrassment is something that "Louie
Louie" helped bring into the world. Or in other words, "Let's
give it to 'em, right now!" And it was given.
In his book, Mystery Train, itself a totem erected to certain
aspects of termite trash, Greil Marcus comes closer to describing
what took place: "A joke in the late Sixties, when bands like the
Mothers of Invention would play it to make fun of the old-fash-
ioned rock'n'roll they had transcended, by the late Seventies and
in the Eighties the tune was all pervasive, like a law of nature or
an act of God."
Yet even agreeing that God or the gods were at work in the
history of "Louie Louie," you also have to agree that he, she, or
they chose for a vehicle characters cut from strange cloth in-
deed-deus ex cartoona? Perhaps this was inevitable or neces-
sary; perhaps no god would play such a strange joke as "Louie
79
Louie" except by using damaged goods-a crippled rhythm and
blues singer connected via a convicted contributor to the delin-
quency to a four-eyed, bookworm rock'n'roll genius connected
via jukebox to a teen-scene rock band that instantly severs its tie
to the singer who made it famous.
But the mystery remains: What did Richard Berry hear in
duh duh duh. duh duh? Why did "Let's give it to 'em, right now"
strike Rockin' Robin Roberts as just the right incantation? And
how was it that the Kingsmen, with the least adept version of all,
were the group who brought all this home to millions of listeners
around the world?
Each of these avatars of "Louie Louie" was not only unlikely
but outright weird; none of the song's incarnations was anything
like logical (hard as Stokes might try to extract from the story
some nugget of commonsensical analysis), and the minute that
"Louie Louie" became explicable by any such process, you and
I both would lose all interest in it.
But suppose for one instant that a Secret unconnected and un-
suspected is a Secret nevertheless. Suppose, more importantly,
that there are Lost Secrets, Secrets once pursued, their charms
actually put to work, but now abandoned, discarded, or forgot-
ten. Wouldn't such Secrets leave a residue in the places of their
begetting? Would not such a Secret retain its power and, while
perhaps changing shape a mite, seize any opportunity to come
back to life?
The Pacific Northwest held such a Secret, perhaps, in the
tradition of its original Native American residents, called the pot-
latch (because forked tongues have so much trouble with the
Nootka patshatl and the Kwakiutl P!Esa).
The potlatch, developed by the richest tribes in the Northwest
(clans that lived amid abundant fish and game and vegetation
and in a climate more mild than the latitude suggests), was a
giveaway, the Indian equivalent of winning one of TV's ten-min-
ute fill-your-shopping-basket-with-all-you-can-grab greed
sprees. Except in the potlatch, instead of receiving, you gave-
gave everything you had: your food, your clothing, your house,
your name, your rank and title. Marcus reports in Lipstick Traces
that tribes competed in potlatching, each trying to give on the
80 LOUIE LOUiE
next higher plane of value, so that eventually a whole village
might be burned to the ground in order that the rules of the
ceremony could be properly honored. But even if all that the
potlatch meant was that a great chief "always died poor," it vio-
lated every moral and legal tenet of non-Native American civi-
lization' encumbered as it was with the even stranger sociorelig-
ious assumption that God most honored men by allowing them
to accumulate possessions beyond all utility in this life, let alone
the next.
There exist few modern parallels to this "insane exuberance
of generosity," as it was called in 1885 by a Canadian legislator
successfully bent on criminalizing it. But one, certainly, is the
Battle of the Bands, those shows at the Spanish Castle and else-
where in which the Northwest rockers were set at each other's
throats like gladiators and developed (like gladiators, too, if
Spartacus is to be credited) a sense of community that Ron
Holden, Buck Ormsby and everyone else who participated, on or
off the stage, describes by using terms like "brotherhood" and
"fraternity." And it is in the context of this sort of modern-day
electronic potlatch, set to the beat of duh duh duh. duh duh, that
we can make a kind of sense of the cry Rockin' Robin Roberts
brought forth to save his soul: "Let's give it to 'em, right now!"
This doesn't solve the Secret of "Louie Louie." But at least
it identifies it, gives it its proper name, and in the naming of
things (or so we are told), there is great power. It would, of
course, be going too far to suggest that the development of the
"Louie" folk-devil, with its overtones of obscenity and govern-
ment surveillance, was a logical response to the recurrent force
of the potlatch on the world of capitalist accumulation frenzy.
But if J. Edgar Hoover had any purpose in life, it consisted pre-
cisely of visiting the plague of federal surveillance upon any re-
vival of the potlatch mentality. The G-men had to bust "Louie
Louie," the breathing antithesis of all they stood for.
7
Ik SwlJh,

The Kingsmen finished their set, which consisted of 45 minutes
of Little Richard and Gene Chandler songs interspersed with
current hits, guitarist Mike Mitchell doing a couple of Buddy
Holly tunes, and drummer Lynn Easton's vocal on the Olympics'
"Big Boy Pete" -left their instruments on the stage, and drifted
to the dressing room at the back of the little club, a hangout for
college kids and water rats who "surfed" up here, where there
were no workable waves, by using round "pypo" (pee-po) boards
to skim over the four or five inches of water scudding at the
shoreline.
On their break, the Kingsmen (singer/rhythm guitarist Jack
Ely, drummer Easton, lead guitarist Mitchell, bassist Bob
Nordby, and organist Don Gallucci) watched as kids pumped
dimes and quarters into the Pypo Club's jukebox. But the kids
weren't playing a variety of records. They punched the same but-
ton over and over-the one that spat out the Wailers' "Louie
Louie." As duh duh duh. duh duh filled the room, the crowd
danced avidly, shingalinging themselves into a frenzied sweat.
The Wailers were among Jack Ely's rock'n'roll idols: "To me,
81
82 LOUIE LOUiE
they were men. There was a huge age difference-when you're
that age, a couple of years is big. And when I was 16, the guys
in the vVailers were in college. I used to go to their shows and
stare at Robin Roberts, Kent Morrill, and all those guys." Their
on-stage antics and mean cool were everything Ely wanted his
band to emulate. So he proposed adding "Louie Louie" to the
Kingsmen's set list. "Let's everybody get copies and learn the
song by rehearsal on Wednesday," Jack said.
"But the song's more in Mike's range," someone else sug-
gested. "He should sing lead, not you, Jack."
"That's all right," Ely replied. "But let's get it together by
Wednesday. "
The Kingsmen were just a semi-pro combo. Ely, the oldest,
was 18, preparing to start college at Portland State in the fall;
the others were a year younger, now entering their senior year of
high school, except for Gallucci, still a mere 15 years old, but so
talented the others couldn't resist having him in the band. Al-
though Jack had just moved into his own place, everybody else
still lived at home. They held their weekly practices in the ga-
rages, basements, and rec rooms of the members' houses-but
never at Jack's. His stepfather wanted no racket.
The following Wednesday Jack turned out to be the only one
who'd learned "Louie Louie." "I was the only one who even had
the record, probably because to get it you had to go to the section
of town where none of the others would have dared to go," he
said, meaning downtown Portland, which had the only record
shops likely to carry a record on a little Seattle-based label like
Etiquette. So Ely was the only band member who knew the
song, and it was Jack who taught "Louie Louie" to the rest of
the group, and it was Jack who dropped a beat from its cadence.
So no matter how more ably Mike Mitchell's voice might have
fitted the tune, "Louie" became Jack's song to sing.
Thirty years later the Kingsmen's story is tough to get
straight, largely because of Lynn Easton's fabled August 16,
1963, coup, which resulted in the expulsion of Jack Ely and con-
siderable turmoil among the band's personnel throughout the
rest of its unconscionably long career. The Easton putsch re-
sulted in a revisionist history of the band, much of it invented by
latter-day band members who spread all manner of unlikely
83
apocrypha about the group, its origins, and the history and con-
tents of its claim to glory, even though the major tale-spreaders
weren't even a part of the band when the epochal "Louie" made
it to wax.
As a result, the story told here mainly conforms to Ely's ver-
sion of events as he told it to me and in the slightly variant but
excellent history of the group compiled by Robert Dalley, who
interviewed both Ely and Easton, for Goldmine in 1981.
Why Jack Ely's version? Well, for one thing, Jack Ely will not
try to persuade you that the magic of duh duh duh. duh duh
resulted from his dropping a beat when the Kingsmen learned
the damn song. He did get the rhythm wrong, of course: "I
showed the others how to play it with a 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2-3 beat
instead of the 1-2-3-4, 1-2, 1-2-3-4 beat that is on the [Waiters ']
record," he told Dalley. "It turned out to be a much faster ver-
sion of the song, but we liked it." The song now went faster
because what Ely's memory had eliminated was the rest after
the third "duh" (as if he were eliminating the period from the
written phrase duh duh duh. duh duh). However accidental, the
change accentuated an undercurrent already in the song. But
Jack Ely knows that the secret of the highest expression of Span-
ish Castle Magic lies far deeper than the merely dropping a beat.
"A very wise person once told me, 'The spirit of love is in that
record,' " Ely said late one night in 1991. "At that precise mo-
ment the six people involved were in love with that song and you
can hear that on the tape.' " Told that this seems a very precise
definition of what's going on within the grooves of the fabled
Wand 143, Ely sighed and even on a transcontinental telephone
line, you could feel his face squinch up somewhere between a
smile and a grimace. "That was my mother," he said.
Jack Ely's mother and stepfather were best friends with Lynn
Easton's parents. The boys grew up in different neighborhoods
and went to different schools, but they came together at Sunday
school and a dinner at one another's houses at least once a week.
The families sometimes even took vacations together.
Nevertheless, their lives were quite different. Jack grew up in
southeast Portland, near Mt. Tabor. Lynn's folks lived further out
in the exurbs, "halfway to Gresham," back east along the Co-
gq
LOUIE LOUiE
lumbia River. Jack grew up tougher and more knowing, a city
kid who loved the rhythm and blues becoming known as
rock'n'roll. Lynn grew up sassier and more middle-class, the
paragon of the frat-party style the Kingsmen helped pioneer.
Portland and Seattle are separated by only a couple hours'
drive, but the two towns are very different-and in the late Fif-
ties the discrepancy was greater. Seattle was a rising industrial
city with a seaport and military bases. Although it also had an
active port, Portland was a river city and, thus, a comparatively
sleepy regional center. Even today Portland's population is
barely half of Seattle's, and it has never come close to Seattle as
a cultural metropolis.
Seattle's relative lack of anti -black discrimination stood in
sharp contrast to Oregon, which was ruled by the Ku Klux Klan
through most of the twenties. Oregon's state legislature didn't
even ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, granting black Americans
the vote, until 1959. In Portland, an R&B-Ioving kid like Jack
Ely was likely to find his ambitions, if not utterly thwarted, at
least more easily diverted than Seattle's Rockin' Robin, Buck,
and their buddies. Ely remembers that at Washington High
School only the infinitesimal minority of black students played
rock'n'roll. But that minority made a big difference: Suburban
David Douglas High School, where Easton and the others went,
was lily white and that absence of contact meant that for a long
time no one at all played the basic teenage music there, even
though everybody listened to it.
Portland was big enough to support two daily newspapers,
the Oregonian and The Oregon Journal, and provincial enough
for each of them to support its own troupe of kiddie vaudevilli-
ans' the Oregonaires and the Journal Juniors. These featured
kids from grade school up to age 18 exhibiting various kinds
(and degrees) of entertainment talent, as they traveled the state
in old Greyhound buses to put on shows at VFW halls, Shriner's
hospitals, old-age homes, and the like.
The newspaper troupes represented show biz at its most ru-
dimentary: "We didn't get paid in money, we got paid in expe-
rience," said Ely. In his feature spot with the troupe, Jack played
guitar and sang a couple of songs by his hero, Elvis Presley. The
85
rest of the time he was in the stage band, "backing up circus
acts." Lynn Easton played drums with the Journal Juniors.
Jack Ely's musical ambitions descended from his natural fa-
ther' Ken Ely, an opera and semi -classical singer of such promise
that in 1943 when Jack, his only child, was born, Rudy Vallee
sent him a congratulatory telegram. But Ken Ely died young,
and though Jack studied piano beginning when he was just five
(and gave his first recital at seven), his stepfather was unremit-
tingly hostile to music as an enterprise. In 1956, when he was
13, Jack, bored with formal piano study, had the standard con-
version experience upon seeing Elvis Presley on "The Ed Sulli-
van Show." He knew this was something he could do and that
pursuing it would radically alter and improve his life. Soon after,
Jack began to play guitar and sing. But no matter how much it
mattered to the kid, his stepfather's disdain remained firm: "My
band was stupid. 'Don't practice when I'm around. I don't want
to hear it.' " On the other hand, Jack's quick to point out that he
derived his perseverance from his stepfather: "He worked me
like a slave, but he didn't beat me, and he did teach me a lot of
the values that prodded me to push the band as hard as I did."
Still, with his mother also unsupportive because hedonism and
joy didn't conform to her religious values, Jack felt "I was in
music despite my parents."
The Oregonians and the Journal Juniors worked only during
the school year, taking the summers off because no schedule-
maker in the world could have coordinated that many different
family vacations. So it must have been about the autumn of 1959
when Jack's mother received a call on a Thursday from Lynn's
mother. The Young Oregonians had the weekend off and the
Journal Juniors lacked a guitarist for a show at a downtown Port-
land hotel-could Jack fill in? He had the time and, for once, his
mom's encouragement. So he took his "$13 Woolworth guitar"
and played the date.
"Mter that night's show, we were sitting at this table drinking
our Cokes and cramming our faces full of sandwiches and
stuff," Jack recalled, "when Lynn asked me, 'Do you ever do any
playing with anybody else?' I said, 'No,' and that was as far as it
went."
A few weeks later, though, Lynn called Jack about another of
86
LOUIE LOUiE
Mrs. Easton's ideas. The Easton family belonged to a yacht club,
and the club needed entertainers for a party. Would Jack be will-
ing to appear with Lynn as a duo? That sounded fine and they
made the gig, doing their solo routines from the newspaper
troupe shows. It went over so well that they cooked up a few
more numbers and over the next six months began performing
"duo stuff as many places as we could." The pair was billed as
Jack Ely, because he did the singing. It still wasn't a rock'n'roll
combo-with only one guitar and a drummer, it couldn't be. But
there were those Elvis songs mixed in.
"Then Lynn found this guitar player at school named Mike
Mitchell and he joined as lead guitarist, which was great. I'd
never played lead guitar. I just used the guitar to back myself up
singing." (Mitchell's father was a country and western guitarist
and Mike had played since childhood.)
Shortly after that they ran across Bob Nordby playing stand-
up acoustic bass in the Douglas High band, and after Jack and
Lynn's mothers convinced Nordby's "incredibly religious" par-
ents that playing pop music for profit and pleasure was not nec-
essarily a path beyond redemption, he was allowed to join.
"We'd hang out at lunch time and after school. By now we were
doing a lot of R&B-Dee Clark songs, Gene Chandler's hits,"
said Jack. Mitchell, drawing on his country roots, added a rock-
abilly influence.
Now that the Ely/Easton combo had become a full-fledged
band, it needed a name. Dalley says Lynn Easton's mother saw
a local newspaper article about a band called the Kingsmen that
was breaking up, and that Easton's parents then went to the club
where that band was doing its final gig to get permission to pick
up the name. But Mike Mitchell has since claimed that he
named the group after his favorite after-shave. One way or the
other, by 1960 the Kingsmen was their monicker, and Lynn
Easton and his mother had gone to the local courthouse to reg-
ister the name on everyone's behalf. (According to Dalley, the
Easton family always took a strong interest in the band and, in
fact, Lynn's father's name was on the group's business card as
manager "so nobody would think they were dealing with a
bunch of high school kids. ")
Don Gallucci joined in 1962 after being discovered playing
with a group called Jim Dunlap and the Horsemen at a teen club
called the Headless Horsemen. The Kingsmen had sought an
organist since Booker T. and the MGs hit with "Green Onions"
and, in Ely's words, "this kid was an incredible wiz on the key-
boards. He had a Hohner electric piano and played it through a
Sears Alamo amplifier." Gallucci, who was just starting out at
Cleveland High, grabbed the chance "to be in a more music-
oriented group, where he could playa few instrumentals." De-
spite his age, Gallucci joined as an equal-the band's financial
structure was share-and-share-alike, economically if not neces-
sarily always creatively.
Nordby's parents weren't the only ones who had religious re-
servations about rock'n'roll. Until Jack finally turned 16, their
parents totally controlled which jobs they took and which ones
they turned down, because an amplified rock band cannot travel
by bicycle. Even after they began driving themselves, "our par-
ents wouldn't let us play in bars," said Jack. "So we used to play
the weirdest shows you could ever imagine: junior fashion shows
on Saturday afernoon at theaters in downtown Portland, Red
Cross fundraisers, supermarket openings."
They got the supermarket gigs because business-minded
Lynn Easton took an after-school job as a stockboy in the ware-
house of Fenimore Pacific, the local food broker, gaining the
Kingsmen an "in" for promotional grocery bookings. "We'd play
at promotions for a pancake mix or a biscuit mix, for mayonnaise
or a particular brand of milk," remembered Jack. At those
shows, they had to downplay their rock and R&B numbers. "We
did a lot of thirties and forties songs, vaudeville-type material.
We'd play whatever the people in our audience wanted to hear-
at the grocery store, you had to play whatever the parents wanted
to hear."
Around 1960 the band met Ken Chase, program director of
KISN ("kissin' "), Portland's main Top 40 radio outlet. Chase ran
a new teen club-which meant a nightclub where no liquor or
beer was served, just soda-pop cocktails with names like real
drinks (Singapore Slings, for instance)-in suburban Milwau-
kee, Oregon, and he offered the Kingsmen a slot as house band,
five nights a week, Thursday through Monday. They took it and
began packing the 150-person-capacity teeniterie. Eventually
gg
LOUIE LOUiE
Chase became their manager, which meant that the Kingsmen
started hounding him for the chance to make a record.
In early 1961, before lining up their house-band residency at
the Chase, the Kingsmen went on their own to a local studio and
made "Peter Gunn Rock," a rockified version of Henry Manci-
ni's TV theme (working off Duane Eddy's rocked-up 1960 hit
rendition, no doubt). It didn't take long for even the band mem-
bers to understand that "Peter Gunn Rock" just wasn't very
good. "It sounded terrible, so we just made a few acetates for
ourselves and forgot about it," Jack said.
But they didn't forget the ambition to make a record, to make
their mark. Gradually, as they learned that "if you wanted to fill
the dance floor, all you had to do was play 'Louie Louie,'" they
decided that was the number they should wax. Chase agreed but
kept telling the boys that the time was not yet ripe.
Finally, one Friday night in April 1963 at the Chase, the
Kingsmen decided to try an experiment. They would play, one
time only, a double-length set-an hour and a half-consisting
of nothing but one long "Louie Louie." Ninety minutes of duh
duh duh. duh duh. If one doubts (as one must, given the later
evidence of elephantine post-Ely trash like "Annie Fannie" and
the world's most hapless rendition of "Money") that the Kings-
men with Jack Ely and Don Gallucci were a great band, this first
of all "Louie" marathons confirms some weird kind of incipient
rock'n'roll genius stirred within them.
Ken Chase had not become a Top 40 program director with-
out being able to recognize inspiration when it festered to life.
As the band emerged sweatily triumphant from the marathon,
(even the normally state-silent Bob Nordby having sung his
lungs out for a few choruses), Chase told them, "Okay, that's it.
You're ready to record. We're going into the studio tomorrow
morning. I've made all the arrangements. Meet me at the studio
at 10 A.M."
To ask veterans of the early sixties Seattle scene about the Kings-
men is to court sneering derision: They were small-time, of no
consequence-in fact, nothing from that little Podunk down
where the Columbia rolled into the Willamette mattered.
Even in Portland the Kingsmen weren't the most important
89
band. Their rivals were Paul Revere and the Raiders, a group
that originated in the wilds of Boise, Idaho, and wound up in
Oregon only because its leader, keyboardist Paul Revere, was a
pacifist Mennonite who did his conscientious objector service by
serving as an orderly at a mental hospital in nearby Wilsonville.
Though their mid-sixties' residency on Dick Clark's "Where the
Action Is" once caused them to be dismissed as teenybopper fod-
der, the Raiders possessed musical skill, relentless personality, so
much confidence that it became audacity, shameless flamboy-
ance, and an outrageous sense of humor, all applied with ex-
traordinary promotional vigor. Although rock historian William
Ruhlmann may go too far in calling them "the most underrated
[band] in rock history," today critics and musicians respect the
Raiders. Even the Wailers, who worked from a summit so high
that they barely deigned to notice a batch of upstart high school
brats like the Kingsmen, considered the Raiders comrades. "We
used to go down to Boise and play down there," said Buck. "And
I remember Paul and Mark Lindsay used to come up [to the
bandstand]. They were the same to us as we were to those black
people that I was tellin' you about. They'd come up and say,
'How'd you do this? What'd you do?' Same damn thing, you
know."
It was in a Wilsonville coffee shop in March 1963 that KISN
deejay Roger Hart met up with Paul Revere. Hart was looking to
promote a show with the Raiders. Revere asked for $150 for the
night. Hart gulped. Paul told him he knew how to make pro-
moting such a midnight ride highly profitable, especially with
the assistance of the most important drive-time deejay in town,
and Hart agreed to give it a shot. They put on the show at the
Trocadero Club across the Washington state line in Vancouver.
It went well-well enough that they stayed together for the next
decade, with Hart serving as the group's manager.
Revere and his fellow crazoids emerged out of the wilds of
the Rockies, places so remote they made Seattle and Portland,
let alone south-central L.A., look as cosmopolitan as Berlin's
Alexanderplatz. Paul Revere was born in 1938 in Harvard, Ne-
braska, to parents with enough guts and enough wit to actually
put that name on his birth certificate. Revere grew up in Cald-
well, Idaho, just west of Boise, poor and ashamed of it: "I was
90 LOUIE LOUiE
ashamed of where I lived, I was ashamed of my family. I was
ashamed of the car that wouldn't run that they tried to drive, I
was ashamed of the house that the wind blew through, I was
ashamed of everything ... I don't think that is abnormal for a
teenager, especially a poor one. You have a tendency to worry
about what other people think, to the point where it gets out of
hand. Whatever's happening, man, you've got to be part of it."
In Caldwell Paul Revere wasn't just part of it; he took charge
of it. Paul heard only church music at home, where his mother
played the battered piano she talked her impoverished husband
into buying somewhere between second-and fourteenth-hand.
But as he entered his teens a few R&B-type songs began floating
over the airwaves. Particularly, there was the living, breathing
hellfire of the great, the one and only, the totally flamboyant
flash from Ferriday, Louisiana, the scariest fire-breathing rock-
abilly of them all: Jerry Lee Lewis, with his golden locks flopping
and his knees knocking as he romped and stomped fingers, face,
and feet all over the baaaaaddest piano ever displayed on
"American Bandstand," growling and yowling through "Whole
Lot-ta Shakin' Goin' On."
"I can do that," said Paul Revere. So he began to, holding
jam sessions at his home, playing the wildest R&B tunes by the
Clovers and Hank Ballard and Bill Haley's Comets, while at the
same time starring as an end on the Caldwell High football
squad; leading a gang called the Nemos; sculpting one of the
area's few significant waterfall pompadours; and dragging Main
Street in an ancient low-rider, "whose underside scraped every
railroad track in Southern Idaho." Graduating from high school,
he "went where all dumb kids go if they have no talent or am-
bition ... hairdressing college." A "long-lost relative" died,
leaving him $500, and he bought a barber shop, which pros-
pered. He bought two more.
"So at the age of 18, I was a businessman and piano player.
I wanted to do both, so I sold the barber shops and bought a
drive-in restaurant." He called it the Reed'n'Bell. Despite its
hideous trade name, the Reed'n'Bell became the Boise area's #1
teen hangout (no, we do not want to imagine #2), especially
after Revere decided to promote it by renting a hall (for $200),
hiring a couple of rent-a-cops and a PA system, buying some
91
spot time on local radio, and putting on a show for seventy-five
cents a head. Teens flocked to hear "Idaho's only rock'n'roll
band," and next time the price soared to a buck. The Downbeats
did their shows wearing farmland chic outfits of coveralls and
jeans, giving way with prosperity and experience to white shirts,
black trousers, and rust-and-black vests.
"I was 19 then and thought I had it made-I did," Revere
said. "Piano playing was an obsession, and I started playing rock
in local halls with some other musicians." The Downbeats, as he
called this aggregation, cleared as much as $600 a night, a seem-
ing fortune with no middleman to cheat the band. After a few
months Mark Lindsay-a flour-covered kid in the bakery that
made the Reed'n'Bell's buns-joined up as lead singer, and the
band began to cut a groove deep and wild across Idaho's Treas-
ure Valley with leaps into eastern Washington and Oregon.
Even if they hadn't been good-and they were a little better
than that-Revere and his bandmates might have left a large
scar anyway, because they were such expert self-promoters.
Lindsay hooked a PA onto the top of his little gold Valiant and
drove through high school parking lots, broadcasting news of
each upcoming dance while a turntable inside the car blared
rock'n'roll.
Like the Kingsmen, the Downbeats got ambitious early. Un-
like them, in Revere they had a leader with the business instinct
to figure out what to do about it and a pianist who made record-
ing worthwhile. Revere took a cheaply but competently made
demo tape of the band's material to Los Angeles. There he
nearly got hustled into a bad deal with an executive at a major
label. Revere dodged that dagger, then left Hollywood and found
John Guss, who ran a pressing planet in suburban Gardena, Cal-
ifornia.
Guss told Revere he was crazy not to use his real name, al-
though the name Guss suggested-Paul Revere and the Night-
riders-sounded too country to Paul, a major issue because
Idaho teens hated country. But Paul Revere and the Raiders
wasn't just euphonious; it was descriptive.
Guss picked the right track off the demo tape: an overacce-
lerated boogie-woogie, "Chopsticks" that he renamed "Beatnik
Sticks" for no better reason than that beatniks were in vogue.
92 LOUIE LOUiE
Revere headed home; he didn't bother telling his band its new
name until the first shipment of records arrived.
"['Beatnik Sticks'J became a regional hit, mostly because
Paul walked into nearly every station of more than 250 watts in
the Northwest with the record under his arm and a one-liner on
his lips," according to Tim Woodward of the Idaho Statesman.
"No one in Idaho had ever made a record," Revere said.
"The radio stations thought they'd found a hero and played it.
Little towns would jump on it because they were impressed that
you'd stop by."
Guss's Gardena Records wound up putting out three instru-
mental singles by Paul Revere and the Raiders through his Gar-
dena Records: "Beatnik Sticks," "Paul Revere's Ride," and
"Like, Long Hair." The latter, a takeoff on Rachmaninoff's
"C Minor Prelude" produced by the notorious L.A. record pro-
ducer / termite scavenger Kim Fowley, combined rockified clas-
sical pianistics that anticipated B. Bumble and the Stingers' 1962
"Nut Rocker" (or, hate to say it, Emerson Lake and Palmerisms)
with a tough surf guitar solo, and it reached #38 on the Bill-
board chart in the spring of 1961. Guss hired PR man Irwin
Zucker, who brought the band to Hollywood, where they ap-
peared on Wink Martindale's pseudo-"Bandstand" TV show
and played a gig at the Santa Monica Pier. On the real "Band-
stand," kids gave it a 95.
But there was no leap to stardom, not even a follow-up hit,
because Revere got drafted, and although his Mennonite back-
ground kept him from drowning as a frogman or some similarly
cruel fate, he spend the next couple of years clanging bedpans
in the Wilsonville asylum. The debacle was quick and complete:
Paul also lost his drive-in because he was not longer there to run
it; when the lease expired, so did the Reed'n'Bell. The other
Raiders split up and Lindsay went to southern California, from
whence Revere summoned him upon the canny piano pumper's
release from CO duty in late 1962.
The transplanted Idahoans began to assemble a new band,
starting with drummer Mike" Smitty" Smith, found playing gui-
tar at the Headless Horseman (the same teen club where the
Kingsmen located Don Gallucci-it must have been like Bird-
land with Clearasil standing in for smack). Smith brought along
93
bassist Ross Allemang and guitarist Steve West, although by Jan-
uary 1963 Dick Walker replaced Allemang. The new Raiders
promoted a few local gigs, with the unremitting devilishness that
passed for savoir faire in the potato country. This caught Hart's
attention.
"I had told Roger the very first time I ever met him . . .
'There's this place that we can rent, the D Street Corral,' it's a
big old dance hall in Portland," Revere told Ruhlmann. "I pro-
moted all my own dates. I bought the advertising. I did it all:
hired the policemen, counted the money at night, paid every-
body. I was a promoter that happened to get onstage, also. So I
told him, 'We can do this thing,' 'cause I knew he's on the #1
radio station and he's got the #1 time slot, and I thought hey,
man, you can sneak in lots of ads that we don't have to pay for,
and we'll do this promotion. So I said, 'We'll split this thing.' We
did it, and it was a killer success. I got a circuit going, and he
was a great partner because of his situation with K1SN radio."
The Raiders had reached the outer limits of rock'n'roll stage-
mania. " [When] we started the band again in Portland," Lindsay
told Ruhlmann, "I said, 'Paul, we can't do it the way we did
before. I've seen how it works down there [in Hollywood], and
you've got to involve the crowd, you've got to be showmen, it has
to be a show band.' Before, everybody just did what they did.
Paul played piano, I played sax or jumped up and down, but it
was totally disorganized and no focus on anything and no flow."
"The music in Portland, Oregon, at this time was all folk
music," Lindsay claimed. "It was like the Brothers Four and the
Kingston Trio. There was no rock'n'roll there. And our reper-
toire had changed. We had added some things. Over a period of
time I'd been exposed to a lot more R&B in Los Angeles, so
when he got together we were doing '00 Poo Pah Doo.' We
[were] basically a white R&B band and they'd never seen any-
thing like it before. We had skin-tight pants [that] I'd gotten
from the drummer, who'd done some work in Vegas. He said,
'Man, you got to be sexy for the girls.' We had these pants that
were so tight, my pants had been sewn so many times on the
seams that they just had rope down the seams!"
According to one account, the Raiders even set their hair on
fire. Paul bought pianos for fifty bucks or so and destroyed them
gq
LOUIE LOUiE
onstage, anticipating the VVho's guitar-bashing antics by a good
two years. "Mark would jump on the piano and scream, yell, and
kick," Revere said. "We were nasty, bizarre, and the rowdiest,
rockingest, craziest group that ever stepped on a stage. We were
animals. We had the worst reputation in the Northwest."
In a town as small as Portland, up-and -coming bands have few
secrets from one another. The Kingsmen and the Raiders got to
know each other well, primarily because the Kingsmen also
played The D Street Corral. Both bands also played the circuit
of clubs on the coast; Ely told Dalley (though not me) that the
Raiders and Kingsmen were playing the Pypo Club together
when they first ran into duh duh duh, duh duh on the jukebox.
Jack remains certain that the Raiders and Kingsmen were play-
ing the same club-the Coaster, a converted roller rink-on the
first weekend that the Raiders first heard "Louie Louie."
The Raiders were a little older (Paul was, by these standards,
a lot older), but by the fall of 1962 all the Kingsmen except Gal-
lucci were out of high school and the band became more of a
full-time project. So the two groups met as something like
equals. "Everybody thought we were rivals, but we were all good
buddies," said Jack. "We would get to the gigs, set up each oth-
er's equipment, and jam for a while before the shows or battles.
Sometimes Mark Lindsay and I would get up and sing some
Righteous Brothers songs together before the show. We couldn't
do it in front of people because our fans wanted us to have this
rivalry between us."
"Louie Louie" was already a local phenomenon when the
Idaho contingent hit Portland. "We started playing at the Head-
less Horseman and people'd say, 'Play "Louie Louie," , " Lind-
say told Ruhlmann. "We'd say, 'VVhat's "Louie Louie"?' Nobody
knew Richard Berry. Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers had
cut 'Louie Louie' and that was the version that everybody
played. So I got a copy of it. I think Lynn Easton might have
gotten me the copy, as a matter of fact .... So we learned it and
we had to play it three times the first night."
According to Roger Hart, "Louie Louie" came to Portland
under the auspices of disc jockey Ben Tracy, the first to play the
Wailers' record. Revere says it was Hart who wanted the Raiders
95
to make a record of "Louie." By 1963 the locals were ready for
a new version, and outside the Northwest the song still kept its
secret. Revere agreed to do the session only if Hart would pay
for it: "I think the song is a piece of junk. It'll never make it," he
said.
But Hart had no idea how to be a record magnate. Revere
told him, "Hey, I'll just get ahold of John Guss and he'll print
you up some records. You can put it on your own label." Hart
called his label Sande (pronounced sandy). Its first release was
the Raiders' "Louie Louie" backed with a version of the Jimmy
Forrest / James Brown R&B instrumental standard, "Night
Train," also set to the duh duh duh. duh duh beat.
Ironically, the Raiders and the Kingsmen went into the very
same recording studio, Portland's Northwest Recorders, to make
their separate "Louies" the very same week. Which band re-
corded first has long been a matter of controversy among
"Louie" scholars, as if there were some musical law of primo-
geniture that would thereby render the latecomer an imitation
or ripoff.
To which the wisdom of "Louie" replies, "Aw, c'mon."
Anyway, different people remember the story differently and
not always to their own advantage: Paul Revere has always in-
sisted that the Raiders were first, but Lindsay has repeatedly in-
sisted that during the Raiders session the engineer talked to him
about the oddity of doing two sessions featuring the same song
in a week. Different Kingsmen also remember differently.
The Raiders were probably first. According to the story Roger
Hart told William Ruhlmann for his exhaustive 1991 Goldmine
history of the Raiders, "There was a disc jockey, Craig Walker,
in Portland who did a thing about two years ago and he an-
nounced it. He called me on the air. His research said that 'You
recorded it on April 11th and the Kingsmen recorded it on the
13th.' " This jibes with the recollection of Bob Lindahl, who en-
gineered both sessions, and with Jack Ely's memory that the
Kingsmen did their "Louie" marathon on a Friday night and
recorded on Saturday morning-the 11th was a Thursday, the
13th was a Saturday. But the records at CBS Records, which
eventually licensed the Raiders' disc, show that the Raiders
didn't cut until April 25th. But the 25th was a Thursday anyway,
96 LOUIE LOUiE
and that could still have been two days before the Kingsmen
traipsed in. It also wouldn't be terribly surprising if Ken Chase,
Roger Hart's boss, decided a little competition with his star air
talent was appropriate after learning that the Kingsmen's best
number was being recorded by their biggest rivals.
But as Hart told Ruhlman, "It doesn't make a bunch of dif-
ference anymore. It isn't going to change history about who sold
most."
In the spring of 1963 anybody in Portland would have told you
that the Raiders were going to sell the most, the most by a wide
margin. In fact, you might have had trouble finding anybody
who knew that anybody else had recorded "Louie Louie" re-
cently.
The Raiders' "Louie" session was uneventful, but it turned
out a great version of the song. It certainly has a great introduc-
tion: In fact, the Raiders' intro to "Louie Louie" is one of the
greatest intros of any record in the history of rock'n'roll, ranking
with the opening of Elvis's "Milk Cow Blues Boogie," the Jack-
son 5's "I Want You Back," and the "one-two-three-fUh" with
which Paul McCartney counts off the Beatles' "I Saw Her Stand-
ing There." It's a moment of shock and surprise and outright
silliness, the more amazing because it actually pulls off the hoary
trick of transferring a stage-act gimmick to a record.
The Raiders' "Louie" opens with a halting saxophone riff,
Lindsay playing as if he's not really sure this is such a good idea
after all. Then as the guitar chops its way in, ending all doubt
with its opening duh duh duh, Mike Smith, singing from back at
the drumkit, shouts words crafted by a genius of the vernacular
in a voice so harsh and rasping it might emerge from a descen-
dant of Walter Brennan:
"Grab your woman-it's-uh 'Louie Louie' time!" It's a bar-
band apotheosis, but undeniably an apotheosis for all of that. So
yet one more time "Louie Louie" reached a height of rock'n'roll
grandeur. Listening to the playback, the Raiders should have felt
satisfied. No semi-pro high school band was likely to top this.
But then how likely was the Spanish Castle Magic of duh duh
duh. duh duh in the first place?
* * *
97
The Kingsmen arrived at Northwest Recorders that Saturday at
10 AM, the crack of dawn, Rock'n'roll Standard Time. Chase was
the last to show up. They went inside and set up their gear as
quickly as possible - studio time cost money, and the clock
started running when they walked through the door. But then
there wasn't that much equipment to set up and Northwest Re-
corders, while the best facility in Portland, was pretty primitive
1
itself. The band moved a large backdrop curtain and rolled up a
rug . Within a half hour, engineer Lindahl began placing the mi-
crophones.
That was a problem. Instead of having microphones on a
stand or a vocal booth in which an overhead mike conveniently
dropped right to mouth level, Northwest Recorders' vocal mike
hung from a large boom stand, and it was so unwieldy it re-
mained well overhead. Jack Ely was forced to stand on tiptoe.
(Additional reasons Ely slurred: He wore braces on his teeth,
and the "Louie" marathon had been cord-crunching.)2
After he'd made his adjustments, Lindahl retreated into the
engineer's booth, where he sat with Ken Chase, who observed
through the large soundproof window. Easton hit the downbeat
and crashed about a third of the way through the first verse when
Chase's voice suddenly squawked through the intercom: "Wait!
Wait a minute! Gotta change a couple of things in here." The
band stood idly strumming and banging while the "producer"
and engineer fiddled with knobs and dials.
A couple minutes later Chase called, "Okay, let's just do a
run-through, just so I can set the levels." Easton counted the
song off and again kicked into duh duh duh. duh duh. Ely
squalled upward at the mike as hard as he could. The band was
nervous; this may have been a rinky-dink setup but it was their
Shot. Ely yawped like Donald Duck in a rage on "Okay, let's give
it to 'em, right now!" The others' nerves showed, too: Just before
the vocal came back in, Lynn Easton clacked his sticks together
and cussed, "Fuck!" Although Lynn was off-mike, he said it
loud enough to register slightly on the tape, and he never quite
recovered the beat, stuttering and stumbling throughout the rest
of the take. When they got to the guitar break, Mike Mitchell
fumbled his way through his Rich Dangel-inspired solo as if
he'd never heard of the song before. By the time Jack yelped his
98 LOUIE LOUiE
final "Let's go!" they sounded relieved to be finished. Now they
waited for Chase to call for the first real take.
Instead, his voice came through the intercom: "Okay! That
was great! What do you guys warma put on the backside?"
"Are you sure?" the guys wanted to know.
"Yeah. Yeah. That was great, man, you never did that song
better," Chase told them. "Now, what're you gonna do for the B
side?"
The Kingsmen had one original song, a surfish instrumental
called "Haunted Castle" (credited to Lynn Easton, though Ely
claims he and Don Gallucci wrote it just before the session), and
the bandsmen knew enough to figure that, if they were going to
make any real money, they were better off using the flip side for
a song for which they'd get composer and publisher credit. So
they cut 'Haunted Castle' in what remained of the hour for
which they'd have to pay.
As they packed, Lindall asked, "Who's paying for this?"
"He is," the boys said, pointing to Chase.
"No, I'm not," said Chase. And he wasn't, since he didn't
have the dough-various authorities cite the figure as $37, $38,
or $44, but Ely says it was a whole $50. Lindall made it clear
that the tape wouldn't leave his hands until the cash crossed his
palm. So the band sighed and each crumpled ten bucks out of
his jeans in order to get their masterwork out of hock.
Ken Chase had no more idea how to get a record pressed
than Roger Hart, and he didn't even have Paul Revere to intro-
duce him to an out-of-town record presser. So he called a Seattle
independent promotion man, Jerry Dermon. Dennon had been
around quite a while-he'd actually worked for Flip's Northwest
distributor on Richard Berry's "Louie Louie," according to Max
Feirtag. Chase had heard that Dermon was starting his own label
and might be looking for product. Dennon was doing exactly
that, and so the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" first came to life on
the Jerden label at just about the same time that the Raiders'
"Louie" was issued on Sande.
According to Jack Ely, Jerden released the record on the basis
of nothing more than Chase "loaning" it to him: "The next
thing we knew, we got a box of records. No contract, no noth-
ing." Not that it seemed like dividing up a pile of profits was
99
going to be the issue. They had a thousand copies of a disc that
sounded to the uninitiated or unconvinced, as Ely put it, "like
all bands sounded in those days. There was a lot of buzz, the low
end of the bass, a little bit of guitars and keyboards-all kind of
running together. We thought it was horrible but Ken loved it.
We had a thousand copies. We sold them to our friends, relatives,
and neighbors. And we bugged all the radio stations in Portland
to play it."
In the life of a rock'n'roll record, radio station airplay isn't every-
thing, but it is the only thing that ensures a certain level of atten-
tion' so it's the sine qua non of record sales. With two versions of
"Louie Louie" competing for regional programmers' attention,
the Portland situation shaped up as a classic "cover version" bat-
tle between two acts with the same song. There are three possi-
ble outcomes: Record A will win, Record B will prevail, or they
will kill each other.
The Raiders had made a more conventionally appealing rec-
ord, but the Kingsmen's raw energy was virtually unprece-
dented. Their connections at K1SN just about cancelled each
other out. Chase was the big boss and he must have favored the
Kingsmen, but Roger Hart had the station's most popular show
and he was clearly going to back the Raiders. With Jerry Dennon
in their corner, the Kingsmen had a wily promo veteran, but
then, Paul Revere's promotional flair couldn't be underesti-
mated.
The contest seemed settled when local Columbia Records
rep Ken Bolster asked Hart for a copy of the Raiders' disc to send
to Columbia's Los Angeles A&R (talent development) staff. Bol-
ster made his request after hearing just an acetate, well before
the Sande version was even pressed. By May 23 the Raiders had
signed with Columbia, the largest wing of CBS Records, the
richest record company in the United States and one that was
desperately trying to sign up rock'n'roll talent after many years
of rej ecting all such music as too vulgar. Bolster had been offered
a $100 bonus for coming up with a signable act, so when he
spotted an acetate on Hart's desk during a promotional visit to
K1SN, he snatched it up.
"I don't think that we'd have thought of Columbia Records,
100 LOUIE LOUiE
'cause Columbia didn't have a reputation of being a rock label,"
Hart told Ruhlmann. "But within a couple of weeks I had a
phone call from David Kapralik [head of A&R] at CBS in New
York." The Raiders signed almost immediately and remained
with the company for the next decade, during which time they
spit out close to a dozen major hits. But "Louie Louie" wasn't
one of them.
Initially, Columbia's West Coast A&R man Terry Melcher
(the 21-year-old son of Doris Day and mentor-to-be of Charles
Manson) thought Bolster had picked a big winner: The Raiders'
"Louie" sold between sixty and seventy thousand copies in the
Northwest alone and the band's restless tour schedule, which
took them as far south as San Jose, California, spread the word.
In fact, Paul claims that in the Northwest, " 'Night Train' was as
big a hit as 'Louie Louie.' It has the exact same beat-on pur-
pose. We did it at the same tempo because it was the perfect
dance beat of the time."
From May, when Jerden released it, through the summer of
1963, the Kingsmen-getting whupped on non-KISN airplay
and with a much more circumscribed touring path - barely sold
six hundred copies of their little gem. The group started talking
about disbanding.
What no one except Jack Ely knew was that Lynn Easton had
some ideas about revamping the Kingsmen. He'd been studying
saxophone "diligently," according to Ely, and wanted to try
making that instrument a more central part of the sound. Ely
knew because he and Lynn were "more than band members. We
did a lotta stuff together: gang fights, double dating, family
things. We weren't just in the band."
At the band's regular rehearsal on August 16, 1963-"a date
I'll remember as long as I live," said Ely-Lynn marched in to
layout a new plan. "He just came in and said, 'I've been taking
sax lessons and I'm getting good.' He said we needed a stronger
personality up front, so he was going to stop playing drums and
step out front, because Mike and I didn't do enough talking to
the audience. Lynn always focused on what bar bands did-just
like I always focused on what rock stars did. He wanted Vegas; I
wanted Elvis."
Lynn's proposal went much further: Jack, who'd always been
101
a guitarist, would become the band's new drummer, a bizarre
idea because Ely had never played drums except while Lynn
sang "Big Boy Pete." "Lynn and I had been talking about mak-
ing some changes," Ely admitted, "But it had always been that
his repertoire [as frontman] would jump from one song to maybe
four or five songs a night."
Ely's recollection is that the others were initially "amused.
Everybody was amused, because he could hardly sing. He could
never sing 'Raindrops,' none of the Dee Clark, Gene Chandler
stuff I was singing. The band told him he was nuts."
What happened next remained unmatched in the annals of
rock band animosity until John Lennon and Paul McCartney
had the little falling out that lead to the demise of the Beatles at
the peak of their career: Easton announced that when he and
his mother had filed the paperwork for the legal use of the name
"The Kingsmen," they'd been told that because all the band
members were under 21, not only would each of them have to
sign a document, but so would their parents and each signature
would have to be notarized. That seemed time-consuming and
unwieldy so the Eastons decided to register the Kingsmen in
Lynn's name alone. The way Ely remembers it, Lynn said that
meant, "If you don't like it, tough shit," or words to that effect.
"Bob and I said, 'Well, up yours if that's the case, Lynn.
We're not rehearsing tonight. I'll see you guys later.' We got up
and left. Why Don and Mike didn't leave, I'll never know." He
drove away mad. "I probably just went out and got drunk."
Jack expected either his or Lynn's parents to intervene. But
Ely's parents have never indicated to him that they feel the Eas-
tons did him any injustice. The two couples remained friends:
"That's the biggest how-de-do."
After everybody realized that Lynn meant what he'd said,
Jack presumed that the Kingsmen would break up. "Louie
Louie" had flopped, the core of the group had disintegrated, and
unless a life in the lounges of Oregon was your idea of a great
future, not much was left for the band to accomplish.
8
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ith certain kinds of greatness there can be no
trifling. The best thing to do is just 'fess up to
the facts. So history's judgment on the Kings-
men's "Louie Louie" ought not to be as stuffy
and half-hearted as Gillett's but a review that just plain spits out
the evidence: "Really stupid, really great. Not really dirty, but so
what?"
A lot of people imagine that the importance of the Kings-
men's "Louie Louie" stems from the profoundly absurd possi-
bility that Jack Ely was singing dirty words. Even the master ter-
mitologist Lester Bangs-universally acclaimed as the Greatest
Rock Critic in History-led himself down this false path. "This
was the one where you can hear the singer start the line 'See
Jamaica moon above' too soon, while the drummer crashes into
102
103
a stumbling roll that must have been accompanied by a wither-
ing glare; this was also the version that had all of us destroying
our styluses in 1964 as we struggled to figure out whether the
garbled lyrics, as rumored, were dirty and if so, what the words
actually were. My circle of friends deciphered in one line, 'I felt
my boner in her hair'; but debate and doubts persisted, with the
Kingsmen disavowing any intentional lewdness, if only to keep
the record on the radio," Bangs wrote in "Protopunk: The Ga-
rage Bands," a chapter in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of
Rock &: Roll.
Such assessments of "Louie Louie" miss, or omit, the lim-
ited relevance of craft when confronted by absolute transcen-
dence. The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" is the most profound and
sublime expression of rock'n'roll's ability to create something
from nothing. Like a termite should, it burrows into your con-
sciousness only to burst forth at the summit of trash rock to chal-
lenge the credentials of any pundit who dares to pontificate on
meaning. If you don't embrace it, and embrace it whole, stum-
bling beats and all, you've missed the point. To my knowledge
only one expert has been able to describe this damnable disc in
the right spirit: Seattle rock historian Peter Blecha in his liner
notes to a Rhino Records compact disc called The Best of the
Kingsmen, where he refers to "[t]he Kingsmen's chaotic ver-
sion-with its clubfooted drum beat, insane cymbal crashes, ul-
tra-cheezy keyboard figures, lead guitar spazzoutlsolo, and that
famous fluffed third verse, as well as Ely's generally slurred and
unintelligible vocals .... " Blecha describes the mess perfectly
and he does so without the faintest odor of condescension.
Don Gallucci may have been a virtuoso prodigy. It hardly
matters since he could have played "Louie" 's opening chords if
he'd been born with ten thumbs. Andyettransferring "Louie" 's
opening to a cheap-sounding electric keyboard gave the riff the
same kind of escalating tension that Ray Charles found in the
similar monotonous-but-relentless opening of "What'd I Say,"
Which, for all I know, is where Gallucci got the idea - and good
for him if he swiped it. The device was hardly worn out.
Lynn Easton's drumming is another matter. Lynn may have
refused to run his rock band as a collective entity-so much for
mythic teenage democracy, eh, Nirvana fans?-and he was un-
lOci LOUIE LOUiE
deniably, on this evidence, a pretty shitty percussionist, pound-
ing away as if his limbs were artificial implements he'd only
lately learned to halfway control, and his sense of time perhaps
imported from off-planet. But the stew that Easton makes of the
simple cha-cha-cha of duh duh duh. duh duh, exhibits the genius
of the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" as much as Gallucci's rendi-
tion of the riff or Jack Ely's hyperventilations on "Let's give it to
'em, right now" and his awesome, final "Let's go!!" Easton's
playing is a great example of why rock'n'roll, which shares so
many roots with jazz, is not jazz in the most extreme sense. In
jazz improvisation is of the essence, but the trick is to cause what
you're making up to sound fated and inevitable. In rock'n'roll,
the idea is to make what is actually totally predictable sound like
a surprise. In Easton's case, this meant playing as if he had no
idea what beat might be coming up in the next bar or, if he did
know, lacked any concrete opinion as to exactly which of his sev-
eral drums and cymbals he ought to smack when he got there.
Playing that way wasn't any kind of technical breakdown or
failure, no matter what an elephantine expert might have you
believe. Rather it is the triumph of the drumming of the Kings-
men's "Louie Louie"-which was forever after, as far as most of
the planet was concerned, if not the only "Louie," at least the
only "Louie" that mattered-even for the hordes of amateur
musicians, many of them with an even sorrier assortment of
skills than Easton's, the Ur "Louie," the alpha, if not omega, of
termite rock. Lynn Easton had no idea what he was doing that
day in the studio (although he had a very clear idea of what he
was supposed to be doing) and it showed, but if that's supposed
to be so all-fired simple, Mr. Marsalis, how come it's been thirty
years and nobody has ever reached that level of inspired incom-
petence ever again? (Don't tell me about "Wild Thing. ")
Which is not to say that the Platonic Idea inhabiting Easton's
traps-thrashing died stillborn. There was one drummer and one
drummer only in the history of rock'n'roll who truly grasped the
genius of what "Louie Louie" represented as a monument in
the annals of percussive history: Keith Moon of the Who, a
drummer who made bashing his kit as the fancy struck him,
rather than as orderly musical progression demanded, into an
elegant style - and a drummer who also kept his cymbals going
105
nonstop in order to cover up any mistakes he might make in a
white noise wash. To say that Keith Moon was the most influ-
ential rock'n'roll drummer of the 1960s is only, in the early
1990s, to emphasize the self-evident. But to say that Keith
Moon's greatest influences as a drummer were both Hal Blaine,
the supreme technician of Phil Spector and surf music both, and
Lynn Easton, who stands in relation to Blaine roughly as Jimmy
Swaggart to Moses, is to begin to come to grips with the true
dimensions of Spanish Castle Magic and its all-but-undetected
influence upon the whole story of rock'n'soul music. And this
makes sense because, if you'd asked him, Lynn Easton probably
would have chosen to sound like Hal Blaine, too. And if you'd
asked him, Hal Blaine probably would have cocked an ear
toward "Louie Louie" and thrown up his hands in despair. Or
maybe not-he never put down Ronnie Spector, whose vocal on
"Be My Baby" (Blaine's greatest musical moment) is the singer's
equivalent of Lynn Easton's drumming on "Louie Louie."
But then for people who are cool and confident, what has
rock'n'roll ever been except a cause for despair? And for those
of us who are less serene and less certain, what has it ever been
except a cause for hope? And isn't such a triumph for termites
the most tremendous subversion of all the standards and prac-
tices of our society? Isn't the idea that there is something eternal
about Jack Ely yawping "Let's give it to 'em, right now" like a
man whose gonads are attached to a vacuum cleaner, a deep and
meaningful threat to our whole way of life as understood on the
spectrum from Tipper Gore to Marilyn Quayle?
In short, why shouldn't the FBI have tried to prove that
"Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen (as reissued on Wand 143) was
a piece of filth undermining the values of the nation? Because
we know now that even though the G-men were too square to
figure out how to prove it, that's exactly what the Kingsmen's
"Louie" did. Which is exactly why it has endured and will for-
ever deserve our love, devotion, and-most of all-gratitude. As
Elvis once put it, "Have a laugh on me. I can help."
9
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1963
Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg met with promotion men from Bos-
ton's record distributors a couple of days a week in the afternoon
before he began his top-rated evening deejay program on
WMEX. Ginsburg, whose voice was so unlikely that he some-
times called himself "Old Aching Adenoids," had been the big-
gest jock in town since Presley was a pup; he'd even survived
giving testimony before Congress in the 1960 payola scandal,
during which he revealed receipt of money from several record
distributors.
Ginsburg didn't just survive. Unlike most post-payola dee-
jays, he still picked his own music. By late 1963 he later boasted,
"I was the only guy in town who would playa new record."
On this particular afternoon Woo Woo was visited by Bob
106
107
Levinson of Bay State Distributors. Bay State was one of the big-
gest distributors in New England (and another major player in
the Congressional payola hearings, though not one of those that
gave Ginsburg honoraria); it carried many of the smaller rhythm
and blues labels. Levinson pitched several discs, the least likely
of them being the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie."
Ginsburg put Jerden 712 on his office turntable. It hadn't
gotten much past the opening duh duh duh. duh duh when he
looked up at Levinson to say, "Wow, this is interesting. But it
sounds awful." Levinson looked crestfallen but Woo Woo reas-
sured him. The Kingsmen were perfect for his show's occasional
feature, The Worst Record of the Week.
Woo Woo was one of the most gimmicky of the great rock
deejays, inserting shamelessly corny bells-and-whistles set
pieces between nearly every record and commercial. Ginsburg
also possessed a sense of the mythic. When he promoted record
hops at the Surf Ballroom at Nantasket Beach, he gave it the
monicker "Surf Nantasket." So he was well prepared for Span-
ish Castle Magic.
Ginsburg played an awful lot of novelty records, and to him
"Louie Louie" sounded like the ultimate rock'n'roll novelty. But
even though Ginsburg may have thought "Louie" was awful,
buggy trash, the wiles of "Let's give it to 'em, right now" did not
elude him entirely. In fact, he understood them so well that on
that night's show, he played this Worst Record of the Week not
the usual once but twice.
"The next morning, when I came into the office," he rem em -
bered several decades later, "there were maybe 50 calls from
record stores, wanting to know where they could get copies of
'Louie Louie.' People were going into the stores and asking for
it-on the basis ofthose two plays."
Something similar had happened in 1961, when Ginsburg
became the first disc jockey in America to risk airing a UK hit by
the British skiffle star Lonnie Donegan. "Does Your Chewing
Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" made Bill-
board's Top 5.
Bay State Distributors probably took on "Louie Louie" as a
favor to Jerry Dennon, its Seattle colleague. Dennon might not
yet have had a contract with the Kingsmen, but he had a release,
108
LOUIE LOUiE
and in the record business, from that day to this, possession may
or may not be nine-tenths of the law but it has always been 100
percent of standard operating procedure. Having failed to break
the Kingsmen in the Pacific Northwest, Dennon apparently tried
what he figured Columbia Records would not yet do for the
Raiders: He took a shot at the national leverage East Coast air-
play could generate.
Dennon's chances looked slim. In Billboard's October 5,
1963 issue, the Raiders' "Louie" appeared as a "Regional
Breakout," which indicated a record achieving hit status in a
single geographic area, in this case not Seattle or Portland but
San Francisco. That was just about the same time that Woo Woo
received the Kingsmen's "Louie." Within two weeks the Kings-
men's yawp had begun to spread like kudzu through the North-
eastern corridor, the most heavily populated and influential mar-
ket in America. The margin of life this brought the Kingsmen's
record was still tenuous. Mter all, this battle of the bands didn't
just pit the Kingsmen versus the Raiders; Jerden had to compete
against CBS Records distribution, the mightiest enterprise in the
record biz.
Dennon's concept must have been to get the Kingsmen disc
started (somewhere, somehow) and then to license it to a larger
label-from time immemorial, the favored tactic of the freelance
record marketer with a finished master tape. According to one
interview with the Kingsmen, he first tried to sell their "Louie"
to Capitol Records in Hollywood, but the future home of the
Beatles rejected the rock'n'roll masterwork as, according to
Mike Mitchell, "the worst piece of garbage they had ever
heard." It's not certain how many other shots at a distribution or
licensing deal Dennon may have taken (he refused to tell me his
story). For certain, he sent Jerden 712 to Marv Schlachter, one
of the proprietors of New York-based ScepterfWand Records,
home of the Shirelles, Chuck Jackson, and Dionne Warwick.
Schlachter co-owned ScepterfWand with Florence Green-
berg, who had started Scepter in 1958 in order to promote the
Shirelles. When Luther Dixon, the brilliant arranger/producer
who also had a piece of the company, discovered the great soul
baritone Chuck Jackson the next year, it was decided to place
him on an new affiliate label, Wand, in a perfectly understand-
109
able chain of reasoning. Throughout its history ScepterfWand
also released novelty rock hits, including the preteen Rocky Fell-
ers' discotheque tribute, "Killer Joe," and the Guess Who's best-
ever waxing of "Shaking All Over." So the company was cer-
tainly a logical home for the Kingsmen, even if Greenberg later
called it "the shame of my life."
"Jerry Dennon sent us a copy of this record, which we had
listened to," Schlachter remembered in 1991. "Frankly, we
didn't think much of it and so we sort of passed on it. A few days
or a few weeks later-I really don't remember which-I was
talking on the phone with Bob Levinson, a promotion man with
Bay State Distributors in Boston, and I asked him if there was
anything particularly hot. He told me about a record that he'd
had on some small offbeat label that was selling a ton: 'Louie
Louie' by the Kingsmen on Jerden. I reached in my desk drawer,
where I kept the stuff I'd rejected, and there it was. 'Oh, I know
that record,' I said, and I called Jerry Dennon and told him I
thought it was a perfectly wonderful record."
Wand re-released the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" as Wand
143 with the strange (or at least inaccurate) credit, "A Jerden
Production by Ken Chase and Jerry Dennon." By October 19 the
Kingsmen had their own regional breakout, from Boston. A
week later, Billboard actually reviewed it, which it never did the
Raiders' version, although the review couldn't have been very
helpful since the text was one long typo: a comment on an en-
tirely different record.
For a while the contest for chart supremacy stayed even: On
November 2, Billboard showed the Kingsmen "bubbling under"
the Hot 100, at #127, which meant little more than that the
Boston airplay continued. The same week the Raiders scored an-
other regional breakout, in Los Angeles. On November 9 the
Kingsmen's disc debuted in the Hot 100 at #83, between the
Secrets' "The Boy Next Door" and Bobby Vee's "Yesterday and
You," but the Raiders' bubbled under at #108, not that far be-
hind. The next week the Kingsmen's "Louie" jumped to #58,
between the Beach Boys' legendary "In My Room" and Johnny
Tillotson's monument-in-treacle "Talk Back Trembling Lips."
This just about killed off the Raiders and three weeks later the
race was over when the Kingsmen exploded from #23 to #4, a
110 LOUIE LOUiE
leap of nineteen positions in a stage of the contest (not the one
against the Raiders but the one pitting the Kingsmen against all
the other bonafide hits of the day) where a jump of four or five
places represented a major gain.
Columbia Records still plugged away on the Raiders' behalf.
On December 14, the group notched its final regional breakout,
this one in Minneapolis/St. Paul. But the issue was settled: His-
tory was now guaranteed to remember duh duh duh. duh duh as
done by the Kingsmen, if it remembered it at all.
Back in Portland, "Revere was screaming at Roger [Hart], who
was screaming at Columbia, who'd done next to nothing with
the record. CBS said, 'How were we to know?' " Mark Lindsay
told Ruhlmann. Thanks to its long-standing hidebound attitude
about the degrading nature of rock'n'roll, CBS was a novice in
marketing and promoting any music more rhythmically strenu-
ous or conceptually outre than Steve Lawrence's pedophilic pop
tune "Go Away Little Girl," which was Billboard's top tune of
1963 but did not set the company up very well for the beat boom
that the "Louie" revival portended.
There wasn't much that could have been done by the most
savvy record marketer. The spirit of the Kingsmen's disc tran-
scended the band's bumbling technique, conveying an order of
essential wildness that outstripped even "Grab your woman! It's
'Louie Louie' time!" According to Peter Blecha, the first week
after Wand picked it up the Kingsmen's "Louie" sold 21,000
copies in Boston. The Raiders' popularity in the smaller San
Francisco market seemed inconsequential. As radio stations
around the country made their decisions, the evidence lay on the
Kingsmen's side. Musical competence has never motivated pro-
grammers hunting ratings popularity.
There was only one place where the Raiders beat out the
Kingsmen: in the Pacific Northwest. According to Mark Lindsay,
in Portland "their version sold approximately 600 copIes, our
version sold 6,000."
By the time Woo Woo Ginsburg made the Kingsmen's "Louie
Louie" the most memorable Worst Record of the Week ever, the
Kingsmen basically didn't exist. Jack Ely was going to school a
I I I
bit and selling vacuum cleaners door to door a lot and consider-
ing forming a new group. Lynn Easton, busy at Lewis and Clark
College, hadn't done much since taking control; Ely claims that
the Kingsmen didn't play at all from the August 16 split-up until
the record hit nationally that fall. A sensible development would
have seen the old group revived to capitalize on the hit. But in
these annals, what's sensible?
Easton recruited new players. Drummer Gary Abbot took
Lynn's old spot, while Easton subbed for Ely and Norm Sund-
holm took over on bass. This configuration recorded the album
The Kingsmen in Person, Featuring "Louie Louie" (except for the
title track, of course) but it lasted only until early 1964, when
Abbot and Gallucci split and were replaced by drummer Dick
Peterson and organist Barry Curtis. That lineup sustained itself
through the remainder of the group's career.
But the Kingsmen had a problem. The vocal on "Louie
Louie," whatever else you could say about it, was quite distinc-
tive and, whatever else Lynn Easton may have been, he was not
a good mimic of Jack Ely. As "Louie" exploded into the national
consciousness, the Kingsmen began getting concert dates all
over the country-the more so when they dumped Ken Chase in
order to work with the New York-based William Morris Agency.
Jack Ely might have been merely annoyed. The split didn't
irrevocably become a feud, at least for Jack, until the night the
Kingsmen taped their stage show at the Chase for the live Kings-
men LP. The bouncers at the door stopped him. "We've been
given instructions you are not to be allowed in tonight," he was
told.
But by the end of 1963 Jack Ely wasn't the band's only old
associate with a score to settle. Around that time he got a call
from Ken Chase, the Kingsmen's erstwhile manager and record
producer. Chase told him that after "Louie Louie" had popped
up to #41 in Billboard, he'd approached William Morris about
national bookings. A few days later Easton called Chase and
fired him, saying he'd signed with William Morris for all the
band's affairs. Now, Chase told Ely, the Kingsmen were doing
well out on the road-until it came time to do "Louie Louie," at
which point audiences tended to rise up and hoot, the most glo-
112
LOUIE LOUiE
rious mysteries of duh duh duh. duh duh being absent from the
Lynn-led rendition. Or so the story goes.
So Ely and Ken Chase reunited and the radio programmer
gave Jack Ely and the Kingsmen-the unsurprising name Jack
selected for his new band -gigs at the Chase, which was packed
out for his return. Chase also arranged a record deal with RCA
Records in Los Angeles. Soon Jack Ely and the Kingsmen were
also on the road, billed as the band with the original singer of
"Louie Louie." Their touring strategy was simple enough: They
found out where Easton's Kingsmen were playing and booked
themselves into the same town a night or two earlier. With the
"original lead singer" monicker, they effectively cut the Kings-
men's business just about everywhere they tried it.
This quite understandably did not sit well with Easton or
William Morris, and they responded by various means, includ-
ing shouting and screaming; filing a lawsuit seeking to prevent
Ely from appearing as the Kingsmen (a name Easton owned, as
Ely very well knew) or from billing himself as the original singer
of the record (which Jack certainly was); and, according to Jack,
even sheer thuggery one night in Boston, when a couple of heav-
ies had to be chased by a German shepherd posted in his dress-
mgroom.
For two years this standoff continued, Ely poaching Easton's
gigs, Lynn lipsynching Jack's vocal, and everybody getting more
and more confused about who actually did what. With Lynn
singing, the Kingsmen did have other hits, notably "Money," a
remake of Barrett Strong's Motown barroom staple that's as
clumsy as it is noisy, and "The Jolly Green Giant," an unholy
wedding of the Olympics' L.A. R&B fable "Big Boy Pete" with
the Green Giant vegetable commercials then saturating televi-
sion. Ely's records-more rocking, less silly-dented no charts
at all (a peril of having signed with the major-but-decrepit RCA),
but live he was still a nuisance and the lawsuits continued. Fi-
nally, in 1965 some Solomon convinced the factions to cut the
baby in half: Ely got about $6,000 in royalties, while Easton be-
came sole proprietor of the Kingsmen name; Jack continued
with a backup group known as the Courtmen. Ely was allowed
to bill himself as "the original lead singer of 'Louie Louie' ";
Lynn could no longer appear on TV to lipsynch the record on
113
which he didn't sing, although he retained control of the band's
name, the most valuable property (since neither party received
any of the "Louie" songwriting or song publishing royalties).
Jack signed with Bang Records-the house label of Bert
Berns, composer of "Twist and Shout" and other significant ter-
mite icons. Jack's first two Bang singles were "Louie Louie '66"
and "Ride Ride Baby" backed with the Raiders' "Louie" sequel,
"Louie, Go Home." By the time those flopped Ely had been
drafted. Berns died while he did his Army stint and Jack found
his career dead-ended when he returned to civvies in 1967.
Despite such efforts as their caustic remake of Donald
Woods's "Death of an Angel" and "Annie Fanny," an ode to
Harvey Kurtzman's Playboy cartoon character, the Kingsmen
never cracked the Top 40 after "Jolly Green Giant." In fact, after
"Louie Louie" made its brief chart reappearance at #97 in May
1966, they disappeared from the charts-although not the minor
league concert and frat party circuit.
But why was their "Louie Louie" still around two years after
it was first concocted?
The answer is what you've been waiting to hear: It had been
discovered that "Louie Louie" was a dirty song.
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ack in 1963, everybody who knew anything
about rock'n'roll knew that the Kingsmen's
"Louie Louie" concealed dirty words that could
be unveiled only by playing the 45 rpm single at
331f3. ( n a ater version, they were audible to anybody who really
paid attention, a cultic/conspiratorial touch worthy of Foucault's
Pendulum.) This preposterous fable bore no scrutiny even at the
time, but kids used to pretend that it did, in order to panic par-
ents, teachers, and other authority figures. Eventually those ul-
timate authoritarians, the FBI, got involved, conducting a thirty-
month investigation that led to "Louie" 's undying-indeed, un-
killable-reputation as a dirty song.
Ilq
115
So "Louie Louie" leaped up the chart on the basis of a myth
about its lyrics so contagious that it swept cross country quicker
than bad weather. Nobody-not you, not me, not the G-men ul-
timately assigned to the case-knows where the story started.
That's part of the proof that it was a myth, because no folk tales
ever have a verifiable origin. Instead society creates them
through cultural spontaneous combustion. The time and condi-
tions become propitious and, suddenly, puppies are microwaved,
innocent tourists return from Mexican vacations with a stray dog
that's really a rat, hooks dangle from the door handles of cars
parked on Lover's Lane late Friday night, Procter & Gamble
suffers under the sign of Satan, and truck drivers pick up hitch-
hiking ghosts, some of them reincarnations of Jesus. The fable
of "Louie Louie" 's dirty lyrics is akin to those, although J. Ed-
gar Hoover never sent his legions of over-scrubbed cementheads
to investigate the illegal importation of Mexican rats as house-
hold pets.
"Where do such urban legends come from?" asks folklorist
Jan Harold Brunvand, the University of Utah scholar whose
studies of them are collected in such engrossing volumes as The
Mexican Pet, The Choking Doberman, and The Vanishing Hitch-
hiker. "Usually, I have found, they evolve from older legends as
people tell them again and again .... These generally stem from
even earlier stories. Beyond that? Often no one knows .... Leg-
ends beget legends, but where it all starts remains a mystery."
Not even the FBI can say more, although with the help of its
reports (revealed in January 1985 through a Freedom of Infor-
mation Act petition by Eric Predoehl, editor of The Louie Report
and auteur of a forthcoming film on Louiemania), we can trace
this specific legend's devolution more easily than most.
The Bureau's "Louie" investigation stemmed from a very
particular and particularly sinister form of this self-propelled le-
gendry-what the British sociologist Stanley Cohen calls "folk-
devils and moral panics," in which vilifications of a newfangled
cultural condition inspire moral outrage as a million Mrs. Grun-
dys and Jimmy Swaggarts cry warnings and predict brimstone.
Moral panics stretch across the public history of rock'n'roll and
R&B, from the riots associated with the appearance of Bill Hal-
ey's "Rock Around the Clock" in The Blackboard Jungle in 1955
116
LOUIE LOUiE
to the "wilding" fantasies about young black males and rap re-
cords purveyed by police reporters and moral crusaders in the
late eighties. "Louie Louie" simply takes the phenomenon to its
most fabulous heights and ridiculous depths.
The dirty "Louie Louie" scare had an additional point of
Genesis: It was the first case, though sadly not the last, where J.
Edgar and his merry minions tried and failed to fathom
rock'n'roll's source and power. It is a tribute not to the hermetic
secrets of Louiemania but to the Bureau's total lack of soulful-
ness that it took the G-men two years of beating around the bush
to come within a hundred yards of reality.
That the FBI investigation determined that "Louie Louie"
was "unintelligible at any speed" is now part of the duh duh duh.
duh duh legend but no police bureaucrat in history ever phrased
anything so eloquently. The closest Hoover's hapless squares
came to such poetry was in notes like the one that Washington
FBI lab audiologists sent to the Indianapolis Special Agent in
Charge (SAC) on April1?, 1964: "For your information, the rec-
ord . . . was played at various speeds but none of the speeds
assisted in determining the words of the song on the record."
But that was a preliminary conclusion, and not an especially ac-
curate one; the lyrics are only impossible to learn if you're will-
fully trying to hear what's not there.
The FBI lab and agents in several American cities spent the
next two years in hot pursuit of rock'n'roll as pornography. They
came to similar conclusions several times: "For your informa-
tion, the record ... was played at various speeds but none of the
speeds assisted in determining the words of the song on the rec-
ord" - a sentence so overwrought and passive it almost had to be
composed by a cop.
Through it all, the Bureau-crats never got the joke. Which
was 1) that the lyric was a sea chanty, and 2) that in the viperous
new generation arising in America's schools, no greater sport
could be had or imagined than making all repositories of re-
spectability cringe and groan over the unprovable. Somebody,
somewhere, came up with the idea of dirty "Louie Louie" lyrics
not only as a way of putting on other kids and panicking author-
ity, but as a way of creating something that rock'n'roll needed: a
secret as rich and ridiculous as the sounds themselves. The teen-
117
age rumor mill spread it far and wide and nobody who wanted
to survive study hall could afford to be so unhip as to admit that
there really wasn't anything at all risque to be heard. And what
was true for a generation of kids hip enough to immerse them-
selves in the codes of rock'n'roll had to be that much more res-
onant for grown-ups so paranoid that they'd joined America's
secret police.
The FBI files on "Louie Louie" detail an investigation for a vi-
olation of what it dubs "ITOM," the Federal law against Inter-
state Transportation of Obscene Material. Because of ITOM,
copies of "Louie Louie" sent from an FBI office travelled under
special "obscene cover" (which probably means festooned with
warning labels, like the ones identifying nuclear waste and rap
records), lest the Bureau itself be criminalized.
Such strictures against violating the obscenity laws applied to
stuff that today's Hustler reader happily brings home to the kid-
dies. America locked down tight against the porno fiends. Max
Feirtag claimed in 1964 that he'd never seen a copy of the dirty
words because no one would risk mailing him one. The FBI ac-
tually destroyed the first few "Louie" specimens it analyzed.
Contact with pornography, even if the porno in question could
not be discerned, represented a contagion that could infect the
mental and moral hygiene of Bureau-crat and civilian alike.
The feds' two-and-a-half-year pursuit of "Louie Louie"
consumed the energy and attentions of agents in six major cities.
Yet the vaunted G-men, for all their moral hygiene and ideolog-
ical integrity, couldn't figure out the joke-let alone the lyrics-
even though they had access to the most modern criminological
tools, state-of-the-art surveillance techniques, and a Limax mu-
sic crib sheet. The agents sat befuddled, staring at poorly typed
copies of the "real" (that is, the spurious) words passed along by
eager snitches. And they did this for twenty-one months, until
November 1965, before they even figured out that it might be
helpful to talk to Paul Revere and Raiders.
The FBI never talked to Jack Ely, the actual singer on the
Kingsmen's actual "Louie." In fact, given the Lynn Easton-led
Kingsmen's vested interest in steering everybody away from the
fact that Lynn hadn't been the lead singer (viz., the liner notes
118 LOUIE LOUiE
to their first album), Jack believes that the FBI may not know to
this day that he was ever involved in the record. *
Even a competent FBI would have been hard-pressed to fig-
ure out who originated the scam. But at least the Bureau might
have spent some time trying to locate him or her, rather than
deciding at the outset that the absurd rumor must be true and
setting out to investigate the song, instead of the story.
Through its bumbling of elementary investigative principle,
the FBI blew whatever slim chance there was of ever identifying
the source of the original dirty "Louie Louie" fable. And this
person (or persons) unknown is one of the true geniuses of the
"Louie" legend, for it is this cock-and-bull story that ensured
the song's eternal perpetuation.
Since we'll never know for sure, we're reduced to theories.
One says that the whole thing started as a collegiate prank,
dreamed up and spread around either by a cabal in a Midwest
frat house or by a lone-wolf, Pacific Northwest college student.
Richard Berry tried explaining it to the Indianapolis News in
1986: ""What happened is that a bunch of college kids back in
Indiana got hold of a printing press and started printing up and
distributing their own ideas of what they thought they heard.
Over the years, some of the lyrics have been changed by various
people, which adds to the mystique of the song." This doesn't
sound much like Richard Berry speaking, but there's no reason
to suppose that the interview was done by an imposter. Is there?
The tradition of the covertly risque lyric forms the essence of
some notable rhythm and blues careers, for instance, those of
Hank Ballard and Rufus Thomas. Heavy sexual innuendo in-
formed everything from the EI-Chords' merely dirty "Pepper-
mint Stick" to Little Richard's "Miss Molly, who sure like[d] to
ball," to Ballard's notorious "Work with Me, Annie" series.
Among the adult black people who were their intended listeners,
such records represented a realistic ribaldry. This was true from
the earliest classic blues records (you want to hear dirty records,
*1 type these words with trepidation. Based on this revelation, will the
whole pathetic carnival recommence? Will Jack hear a knock on his door? Or
have I just added a few more sheets to my own file? Are those footsteps in my
hallway, or it is just another chorus of duh duh duh. duh duh?
119
check out such blessed geniuses as Bessie Smith or Ma Rainey,
on such items as "I'm Wild About That Thing" and the original
"See See Rider," all of them made between 1920 and 1940
when Ronald Reagan's innocent America supposedly prevailed)
right up through the "Annie" series. By the time Fats Domino
added the leer to "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill," though,
teenage titillation rather than frank, adult sexual humor was at
work. For R&B's new audience of young white outsiders, the
early rock'n'rollers, unfamiliarity with the patterns of black
speech coupled with poor recording fidelity spiced even innocent
tunes. As R&B historian Peter Grendysa put it, "Getting there
was half the fun, and sometimes what we thought we heard was
much better than the real thing."
"Louie Louie," from Richard Berry's version to the Kings-
men's, had nothing to do with any of this. That poor half-in-the-
bag Jamaican sailor can't even get into the same country as his
girl. But the rumor that "Louie Louie" was a dirty record cap-
tured the American imagination, not just because teenagers
need to know, right now and for sure, things that adults will
never figure out in a decade, but because the Dirty "Louie" fa-
ble fundamentally reflected the country's infantile sexuality. An
adolescent fixation would have run its course far more quickly.
The idea that "Louie Louie" might be "dirty" sustains itself to
this day because it hit adults as hard as it does kids - and if you
take a cold, hard look at the real America, no wonder. We're
dealing with the concept of someone actually (well, possibly)
singing about sex (sort of) in a nation that still goes into a gig-
gling spasm when someone makes a fart joke, a society that tried
to put a TV star in jail for jacking off at an adult film. American
needs to foster panics like the ones over "Louie" and Pee Wee
from time to time in order to have a way of releasing the tensions
caused by so many self-consciously tightened sphincters, artifi-
cially dehydrated vulvas, and willfully suppressed erections. In a
culture that interprets puberty as a tragedy of lost innocence
rather than as a triumphal entry into adulthood, the possibility
of someone actually giving vent to sexual feeling remains deli-
ciously scandalous. Sex is bad, and somebody singing about it
would be really bad.
So the story circulated that if you listened to "Louie Louie"
120 LOUIE LOUiE
with a knowing ear, you'd hear the Kingsmen describe debauch-
ery and bliss. And if you couldn't hear those dirty words even
after all that toil, you might be handed - as I was sometime in
1964 or 1965 - a copy of the real lyrics at the back of the school
bus. A copy that you then went home and tried to hide from your
mother's prying eyes and then proceeded to lose, so that years
later you couldn't remember more than a fragment or two: "She
had a rag on, I moved above," "I stuck my boner in her hair."
Indeed, it may be fairly said that the only genuinely useful
purpose to which the FBI put America's tax dollars in the "Louie
Louie" investigation was in accumulating variant versions of
these supposed dirty words. The most common set, collected by
the FBI in Tampa, Florida, in 1964, went like this:
CHORUS: Oh, Louie, Louie, oh, no
Get her way down low
Oh, Louie, Louie, oh, baby
Get her down low
A fine little girl a-waiting for me
She's just a girl across the way
Well I'll take her and park all alone
She's never a girl I'd lay at home.
(CHORUS REPEAT)
At night at ten I lay her again
Fuck you, girl, Oh, all the way
Oh, my bed and I lay her there
I meet a rose in her hair
(CHORUS REPEAT)
Okay, let's give it to them, right now!
She's got a rag on I'll move above
It won't be long she'll slip it off
I'll take her in my arms again
I'll tell her I'll never leave again
(CHORUS REPEAT)
Get that broad out of here!
Like the folk song collectors who prided themselves on com-
piling variant texts of the ancient Appalachian ballads, the Bu-
'12. i chard Berry onstage i n hi s pri me (Courtesy Ri chard Berry fami l y &;
Eric Predoehl)
'12. i chard Berry on a rare day of glory. Was thi s the real ori gi n of the " L oui e
L oui e" parade? (Courtesy Ri char d Berry fami l y &; Eric Predoehl)
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/he Wai l ers i n a moment of
rare repose. At f ar l eft, B uck
Ormsby prepares to conquer
the uni verse, whi l e hi s band-
mates f i nd the perf ect coifs f or
the peri od, coveri ng one ear, to
i mpress the gi rl s, whi l e l eavi ng
the other uncovered, i n order
to pl acate parents, teachers,
and pol i ce. (Courtesy
Ar t Chantry)
/he Wai l ers al l up i n the ai r
over thei r i mpendi ng success
(Courtesy Ar t Chantry)
Oassi c Wai l ers, f rom the
sessi on that produced one of
thei r al bum covers. T hat's K ent
Morrel l about to l ose hi s gri p
on a l i mb. (Courtesy Ar t
Chantry)
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A rare l ate seventi es arty-fact, the
L oui e L oui e wi ne cool er never caught
on, partl y because i t got pul l ed off the
market for copyri ght reasons. Also
because its taste was purel y " open at
your own ri sk. " Note the saxophone on
the carton: Obviously, whoever pro-
duced thi s gunk had been deepl y
i nf l uenced by the Paul R evere and the
R ai ders versi on. Contai ns sodi um
benzoate as a preservati ve. R i chard
B erry used stronger stuff.
(John Wagner)
/he motherl ode of B erry al bums,
thi s Swedi sh rei ssue of hi s Fl ai r and
Fl i p si des f rom the fifties contai ns
the i ndi sputabl e " L oui e" ori gi nal
and much more.
(Eric Predoehl)
Af ter recapturi ng the ri ghts to hi s
masterwork, R i chard B erry slowly
came to terms wi th modem musi cal
technol ogy, i n part thanks to hi s son,
Marcel , here, accompanyi ng the ol d
man on el ectri c bass i n 1988.
(Eric Predoehl)
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the print version of this title.]



CP erpetrators of assorted " L oui e" s, al l of extraordi nary qual i ty. Coup de
Ville is the soundtrack f rom Joe R oth's fihn; I di ot Show Classics emerged
f rom the termi te-f evered brai n of San Franci sco deej ay M. Dung; Paul
Shaf f er and Johnny T hunders represent Duh duh duh. duh duh at opposi te
extremes: l ounge rock versus punk rock, mel ody versus noi se, campi ng i t up
versus taki ng i t to heart. (Courtesy Eric Predoehl)
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L Qi chard B erry tri es to remem-
ber hi s lyrics, at a T ower R ecords
autograph sessi on duri ng the
1983 " L oui e L oui e" marathon.
(Eric PredoehT)
:;E. oumani a lays l ow yet another
K FJC staffer. (Eric PredoehT)
I t took a quarter of a century
but R i chard B erry fi nal l y made i t
to TV, duri ng the " L oui e L oui e"
marathon at radi o stati on K FJC,
1983. T he fol l owi ng vi deo stills
are f rom E ri c Predoehl 's docu-
mentary, The Meani ng of " Louie. "
(Eric PredoehT)
Vuh duh duh. duh duh i nsti ga-
tor B erry conspi res on the ai r
wi th " L oui e" thon ori gi nator Jef f
" Stretch" R i edl e.
(Eric PredoehT)
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'12i chard Berry j ams
one of hi story's l ong-
est " L oui e" s, at the
1983 K FJC " L oui e
L oui e" marathon.
(Karen Howe)
'12i chard B erry and Jack E l y
(right), the survi vi ng gi ants of the
Duh duh duh. duh duh set finally
meet, at the K FJC " L oui e L oui e"
marathon, August 1983. (Karen
Howe)
A " L oui e L oui e"
summi t meeti ng. Left
to right: Fi l mmaker
E ri c Predoehl ( chi ef
conspi rator behi nd
The Loui e Report
newsl etter); defrocked
but still rei gni ng
K i ngsmen vocal i st
Jack Ely; and R i chard
Berry, the al most-
i nnocent who started
i t all. (Karen Howe)
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L Qocki n' R obi n R oberts, i n a shot that bel i es
both the egghead academi c and the hardass
rocker si des of hi s personal i ty (Courtesy Ar t
Chantry)
/hat gl eam i n the eye is the
dead gi veaway that R ocki n'
R obi n was no ordi nary sl i de-
rul e speci al i st. T he two photos
of R obi n reproduced here are
the onl y two known shots of
the semi nal garage-punk
si nger. (Courtesy Ar t Chantry)
/he Wai l ers onstage; B uck Ormsby on bass at extreme left.
(Courtesy Ar t Chantry)
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CPromoti onal flyer for the R ocki n' R obi n R oberts ( a/k/a the Wai l ers) " L oui e
L oui e, " i ncl udi ng sampl es of its chart posi ti ons at Seattl e radi o stati ons, and
the Cashbox review. (Courtesy Ar t Chantry)
2ri c Predoehl , di rector of The Meani ng of " Loui e" and edi tor of The Loui e
Report, poses wi th the oft bl acked-out F.B.I . files. (Eric Predoehl)
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121
reau also dug up a couple of variant Dirty "Louie"s. The crudest
wasn't even set out in the style of verse, just slammed down,
word-after-word with all the dispassion of the most perfunctory
porn. Or maybe it had been scribbled furtively in some junior
high hallway, with the thought that the authorities were hot on
its trail:
Fine little girl waits for me get your thrills across the way
girl I dream about is all alone she never could get away from
home
Every night and day I play with my thing I fuck your girl all
kinds of ways. In all night now meet me there I feel her low I
give her hell
Hey youth bitch. Hey lovemaker now hold my bone, it won't take
long so leave it alone. Hey Senorita I'm hot as hell I told her
I'd never lay her again.
Then there's the one the circulated in Detroit during the song's
1965-66 revival there (the one I got on the bus, I think):
CHORUS: Lou-ii Lou-ii Oh, no. Grab her way down low.
(REPEAT)
(CHORUS)
(CHORUS)
(CHORUS)
There is a fine little girl waiting for me
She is just a girl across the way
When I take her all alone
She's never the girl I lay at home.
Tonight at ten I'll lay her again
We'll fuck your girl and by the way
And ... on that chair I'll lay her there.
I felt my bone ... ah ... in her hair.
She had a rag on, I moved above.
It won't be long she'll slip it off.
I held her in my arms and then
And I told her I'd rather lay her again.
122 LOUIE LOUiE
"Louie Louie" survived despite as much as because of the
spell cast by the "dirty lyrics" legend. Exactly why either song or
rumor persisted remains indecipherable. Surely no one-not
Richard Berry nor Rene Touzet, not Max Feirtag nor Lynn
Easton, not Buck Ormsby nor Ron Holden nor Mark Lindsay
nor Rockin' Robin Roberts (God rest his rockin' soul), nor any
man whose lips have ever shaped a "Let's give it to 'em, right
now!" or fingers pounded out a duh duh duh. duh duh, and cer-
tainly not poor Jack Ely-could resolve any of "Louie" 's central
mysteries, even if chained to a radiator and grilled for bread-
and-water weeks with rubber truncheons and 300-watt bulbs
angled square in the eyes, while a tape loop of Amy Grant sing-
ing the best of 2 Live Crew played ceaselessly in the background.
What can be deciphered are some facts: For instance, the
approximate date when all this furor started. That would be
about November 1963, when the Kingsmen's record began treat-
ing the Billboard charts the way King Kong dealt with the Em-
pire State Building. The G-men learned of it belatedly. The ear-
liest reference to "Louie" in the FBI file is contained in a March
27, 1964, memo from Indianapolis. This memo reports an un-
named local woman saying that "about November, 1963, she
purchased a record under Wand label at Blanchard's, a record
shop in Crown Point, Indiana .... Record was publicly displayed,
was routinely priced, and was not suspected of being obscene
when purchased.
"Sometime after buying the record, [blacked out] heard from
various acquaintances the record had obscene lyrics if the 'Louie
Louie' side were played at a speed of 331/3 instead of the normal
45 rpm. About 1/29/64, a co-worker gave [blacked out] a typed
sheet of lyrics, which were allegedly transcribed from the record
when played in this manner, and which appear obscene.
"She said the record was widely played in the area and was
once ranked first on the WLS Radio (Chicago) record survey.
"She said she played the record in the manner described
above and the lyrics seem to follow very closely to the words on
the typewritten sheet. She said the typed page was a transcrip-
tion by some unknown person in Crown Point area and was not
furnished with the record." The SAC also sent along her tran-
script of the dirty lyrics (the first set above) and asked the FBI
123
lab to determine their authenticity by comparing them with the
disc. The memo further reported that on March 25, Assistant
U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Lester R. Irvin of Hammond, Indiana,
asked the FBI to see if the record violated u.s. Code Section
1465, Title 18, the ITOM law. Irvin said that if Hoover's boys
found the obscenity, he'd jail the perpetrators.
So the FBI lab made its initial "unintelligible" analysis.
What did not follow, at least as far as can be determined from
the released files, was what you'd expect: an interrogation of the
woman who made the complaint, the co-worker who gave her
the dirty lyrics, whoever gave them to the co-worker and on back
to the source of the story. Instead of investigating the story, the
Bureau took the tale at face value and set about investigating the
music, with the object of making it criminal.
The Kingsmen's "Louie" held in the Billboard Top 10 from De-
cember 7 (when it made its virtually unprecedented jump from
#23 to #4) into January, when it peaked at #2. (Although the
record did make #1 in the industry's other trade paper, Cash
Box, it's the Billboard ranking that's definitive.) Along the way,
"Louie" outstripped such enduring wonders of the recording
arts as Rufus Thomas's "Walking the Dog," "I'm Leaving It Up
to You" by Dale and Grace, and the Beach Boys' so-jive-it's-cool
"Be True to Your School." But our boy "Louie" was kept out of
Billboard's top spot by-ring in another offbeat chorus of duh
duh duh. duh duh 'cause there ain't a writer in the world with
the guts to make this up-"Dominique" by the Singing Nun
(Soeur Sourire aIk/aJ Sister Luc-Gabrielle), singing, in French,
the praises of her Dominican order.
Now, nobody operating in their right mind, the record busi-
ness or even Billboard's employ, ever believed that "Dominique"
was more popular than "Louie Louie." In both the short and
long run, "Louie" far outsold "Dominique" or any other record
on the chart at the end of 1963. But "Dominique," quintessen-
tial elephant trash, was a #1 record, and "Louie Louie," arche-
type of termite trash, wasn't- because Billboard's Hot 100 chart
measured not popularity or record sales but a combination of
sales, airplay and proper decorum (and perhaps the amount of
any given record label's advertising budget devoted to Billboard)
LOUIE LOUiE
as determined by a mystical formula comprehended by fewer
mortals than grasp the essence of "Do wah diddy." So "Louie"
and such Top 10 cohorts as the Murmaids' "Popsicles and Ici-
cles" were cast into outer darkness while Soeur Sourire reigned.
Even if "Louie" was cheated without a glimmer of Christian
conscience out of its rightful rank at the top of a chart that every-
body outside the music business believed reflected record sales
and not mumbo-jumbo, the Kingsmen enjoyed a good long run
in the Top 10. Whether that run was stimulated or deterred by
the dirty lyrics rumors is hard to figure out. Although "Louie
Louie" fell to #3 on the year-end chart, by January 4 it was back
to #2, probably because the rumors began to pick up speed. But
such innuendo impedes radio airplay and demolishes decorum,
the most intangible elements in the Hot 100 formula (ad lineage
can be counted). Anyway, when "Dominique" finally faded on
January 11, the record that cashed in the chips for the top was
Bobby Vinton's cornball "There, I've Said It Again."
Vinton remained at # 1 through January 25, with the Kings-
men breathing down his Mr. B collar, but slamming into third
place was another foreign disc: the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your
Hand." (At #4, curiously enough, was the venerated termite
classic, "Surfing Bird" by the Trashmen, a record that makes "I
Want to Hold Your Hand" sound like "Dominique.") By Febru-
ary 1, 1964, the Beatles had conquered Billboard's top slot and
that was it for your basic American termite for a good, long spell.
"Louie" remained in the Top 30 through the end of February,
but it dropped off the chart the first week in March, stifled by
more than just John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
"Indiana Gov. Puts Down 'Pornographic' Wand Tune,"
yowled a page-three headline in the February 1 Billboard. "Say
Kids Blew the Whistle." " 'Louie Louie' has been fingered by
Indiana's first citizen, Gov. Matthew Welsh, as being 'porno-
graphic,' " wrote Gil Faggen. Mter Welsh heard the record, he
"told people his 'ears tingled.' Welsh then promptly fired off a
request to Reid Chapman, president of the Indiana Broadcasters
Association, requesting that the record be banned from all radio
stations in the state, and Chapman, vice-president of WANE
125
AM-TV, Fort Wayne, dutifully passed Welsh's request on to his
membership."
"My position with respect to the whole matter was never that
the record should be banned. At no time did I ever pressure any-
body to take the song off the air," Welsh, a Democrat, told me in
1991. "I suggested to him [Chapman] that it might be simpler
all around if it wasn't played." He contacted Chapman, Welsh
says, because he "was a friend of mind. I knew him; we weren't
close." Chapman listened and began investigating.
Welsh clearly feels frustrated that "Louie Louie" is all he's
remembered for: "I thought the whole thing was a tempest in a
teapot, and not worth any extended pursuit. I have no interest in
it either way." He says he never banned the record, just sug-
gested it not be played. But it doesn't take a First Amendment
scholar to see the contradiction. If a record isn't played at the
suggestion of the state's chief executive, it has been banned.
Welsh no longer recalls how he first learned about the pur-
ported rock'n'roll filth. Faggen wrote that "a high school student
from Frankfort, Indiana, was first to send the Governor a copy
of the allegedly pornographic recording. College students from
Miami University in Athens, Ohio, followed suit by providing
Welsh with copies of printed 'obscene lyrics.' "There's no telling
if these words were the same or different from the ones in the
FBI's files, or why students in Ohio decided to rat out "Louie"
in Indiana. Although Welsh's action soon became notorious
among rock fans, he says that the FBI never contacted him.
It wouldn't have helped. Billboard reported that, despite
Welsh's tingle, "attempts by WOWO [Indianapolis] and other
stations to capture the lyrics from the Wand waxing was neigh
impossible because of the allegedly unintelligible rendition .... "
ScepteriWand Records told Faggen, "Not in anyone's wildest
imagination are the lyrics as presented on the Wand recording
in any way suggestive, let alone obscene." "The feeling at the
diskery," the story added, "is that a bootleg version may be the
culprit. It also seems likely that some shrewd press agentry may
also be playing an important role in this teapot tempest. Exactly
whose press agent is hard to pin down at this point."
Probably not ScepteriWand's, since the label was too small
and unsophisticated to do much more than run to keep up with
126 LOUIE LOUiE
sales demand. Though Schlachter gleefully confesses to cashing
in "when this whole thing started to mushroom," in a thirty-five-
year music industry career, Marv Schlachter's specialty has
never been orchestrating such exploitation, and if it was a put-
up job, the "Louie" scam wasn't conducted by an amateur.
If not Scepter/Wand, certainly not Limax, which would prob-
ably have loved to have sold additional copies of "Louie Louie"
sheet music except that none of the words that tingled the gov-
ernor and the kid in Frankfort and the frat boys at Miami of Ohio
appeared in the sheet music, so nobody bought it. Instead of
rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of windfall profit,
Max Feirtag reacted like a man whose integrity had been im-
pugned.
" 'Louie' Publishers Say Tune Not Dirty at All," read the
page-four headline in the February 8 Billboard. "Publishers of
'Louie Louie' have fired off a letter to Reid Chapman, president
of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, claiming that the lyrics
on the record are not 'pornographic' as claimed last week by
Indiana Gov. Matthew Welsh." The letter asked that Chapman
inform Indiana stations "of the true situation so that they may
feel free to continue spinning the disk."
"Publisher Max Feirtag told Billboard he would award a
check for $1,000 to anyone finding anything suggestive in the
lyrics as recorded by the Kingsmen on Wand Records," said the
unbylined article. "Feirtag's attorneys state that another set of
lyrics is in circulation, which they think is being used to interpret
the unintelligible renditions on all the disks covering the tune.
Feirtag said he had been informed copies of the lyrics have been
found around Louisiana State University."
Feirtag knew about LSU because of Vern Stierman, of KEEL
in Shreveport, Louisiana. In defense of "Louie," KEEL aired
an editorial, read by Stierman, on February 5 and 6 that said, in
part: "We can censor the material we put on the air, but we can-
not censor the minds of people. Little minds think little thoughts
and, unfortunately, dirty minds think dirty thoughts. Which
leads me to the currently popular record, 'Louie Louie.'
"Someone, somewhere, with an obscene imagination de-
cided to write lyrics that in his opinion sounded like the sounds
on the recording by the Kingsmen. Then he took it upon himself
127
to object to the lyrics, which didn't exist until he wrote them. He
sent these lyrics with the record to the Governor of Indiana. This
story was relayed across the country by the news services, and
little minds all over began to write their own lyrics to the song
... lyrics which do not exist on the recording of 'Louie Louie'
by the Kingsmen. These are the actual lyrics. Not Shakespeare,
admittedly, but not obscene by any stretch of the imagination."
The station manager then read them.
Obviously, the guy just didn't get it.
Several bureaucracies now ground into action. The Marion
County, Indiana, prosecutor's chief trial deputy, Leroy K. New,
looked into "Louie" and said, "The record is an abomination of
out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm and clanging
cymbals." But even Leroy New didn't think that the words were
obscene, and the ITOM law just didn't reckon with dirty sounds.
On January 28, Wand received a semi -threatening letter
from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). "NAB's
Code Authority has received a number of inquiries and com-
plaints from member stations on the recording 'Louie, Louie'
being circulated with a Wand label," it read. "Here are the facts
as we understand them:
"The Code staff has listened to the record on all standard
RPMs and has found nothing objectionable in it. In the Code
staff's opinion, the lines, delivered in rock and roll and calypso
style, would be unintelligible to the average listener.
"NAB has received from the music publishers copies of the
lyrics and has found nothing objectionable in them. However, it
also has received from another source a purported set of lyrics
which are unfit for broadcast.
"The phonetic qualities of this recording are such that a lis-
tener possessing the 'phony' lyrics could imagine them to be
genuine."
On February 12, United Press International reported: "The
Government has dropped investigations it had been conducting
into complaints that a popular rock-and-roll record has obscene
lyrics .... Investigations of the record were started by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), the Post Office, and
Justice Department after complaints were received from about a
128 LOUIE LOUiE
half-dozen persons, including Indiana Governor Matthew K.
Welsh.
"All three governmental agencies dropped their investiga-
tions because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of
the song were, even after listening to the records at speeds rang-
ing from 16 rpm to 78 rpm." But this story, perhaps another
source of the "unintelligible at any speed" factoid, was far off
base. If the Post Office conducted an investigation, it left no pa-
per trail. The FBI, which is a branch of the Justice Department,
would still be looking into "Louie" two and a half years later.
And the FCC continued its inquiry the very next day.
The FCC had no jurisdiction over the record business, and
the Commission is forbidden to practice censorship by the law
that created it. Nevertheless: "The Commission has received
complaints to the effect that certain radio stations have, by play-
ing one of your records titled 'Louie Louie,' featuring The
Kingsmen, violated the federal statute which prohibits the
broadcast of obscene, indecent, or profane language," wrote the
FCC's Ben F. Waple to Wand on February 13.
"The staff has conducted an inquiry into these complaints.
Before terminating its inquiry the Commission would appreciate
receiving, as promptly as possible, your comments on this mat-
ter, including any information in your possession which might
throw light upon either the source or the validity of allegations
that the lyrics as sung by the Kingsmen were in any way obscene.
We also should appreciate your comment whether, even though
unobjectionable lyrics were used in recording the song, there
was improper motivation on the part of the singers or anyone
associated with the production of the record in making the re-
corded lyrics so unintelligible as to give rise to reports that they
were obscene."
On Valentine's Day, the record company also heard by phone
from a Mr. Raye of the FCC by phone. Wand wrote him back
the next day, sending along two copies of the record and two
copies of the official "Louie" lyrics, and giving the record com-
pany's side of the story. Wand vowed that "all the people con-
nected with the making and the sales of this record ... wish to
bring to justice anyone connected with the dissemination of li-
belous information," even offering to play the basic track from
129
which the record had been made for any agents the Commission
wanted to send by. Wand's letter also states that "our sales fig-
ures do not indicate any infringement by any outside source,"
meaning that, despite what Billboard was told, the company had
no evidence of any bootlegging.
But the FBI stayed on the case like hound dogs snoopin'
round a door.
File #145-2961 (Tampa)
SAC Tampa to FBI lab 2/17/64
Subject: UNKNOWN SUBJECT
PHONOGRAPH RECORD
"LOUIE LOUIE" DISTRIBUTED
BY LIMAX MUSIC, N.Y.C., N.Y.
ITOM
Transmitted herewith are the following items for examina-
tion by the FBI Laboratory:
Lyrics of "Louie Louie" as published by Limax Music
Record "Louie Louie" (under obscene cover)
Reported obscene lyrics for "Louie Louie." (Under ob-
scene cover)
On 2/10/64 [long black out] advised SA [blacked out] his
department received complaint from [long black out] advising
that captioned record is very popular with the high school stu-
dents, and he has been furnished lyrics for the song which are
very obscene.
[blacked out] he determined that this record is very popular,
is a best seller in the area, and is played by the local radio sta-
tions. He said the record is a calypso-type song, and the words
are hard to recognize. However, with a copy of the obscene
words to refer to, it sounds like the lyrics are identical with the
enclosed obscene lyrics.
[longest black out of all] furnished what Limax Music Com-
pany claims to be the actual lyrics of the song, which is Enclo-
sure #1. However, [blacked out] said the lyrics of the song do
not seem to be the same.
Laboratory is requested to determine if enclosed record,
"Louie Louie," can be considered obscene for purposes of pros-
ecution under ITOM statute.
130 LOUIE LOUiE
Over the next thirty months, such subliterate internal mem-
0randa foamed within the FBI's internal pipelines, eventually
generating close to 250 pages of released material.
What the FBI tried to do is not necessarily so outrageous,
presuming that you're willing to live in a country where the big-
gest nerd in the eleventh grade is encouraged to seek his revenge
by becoming a government snitch, and where witch-hunts are
conducted against the singers of songs. As performers from Pete
Seeger to Public Enemy can aver, this has been the case in
America for fifty years, though perhaps a patriot would deny it.
The FBI's hunt for the source and substance of the dirty
"Louie" plays out such McCarthyite tragedy as farce. For ex-
ample, on March 2, 1964, Tampa's Special Agent found his
course blocked because "the 'Louie Louie' record is no longer
popular in the Sarasota area and apparently ... the obscene
lyrics ... are no longer being distributed or even discussed."
But the Special Agent can't drop the case just because it's
now irrelevant to ninth-graders. He can't even recognize the ev-
idence that these kids have survived their knowledge of the filthy
excesses contained in the lewd "Louie." Not even if he wants to.
Because two days later, a faculty snitch from another school "ob-
tained a handwritten copy of the obscene lyrics from one of his
students who came to him voluntarily, saying he had found the
lyrics on school property. [Mr. Faculty Quisling] said his inquiry
then determined that the obscene lyrics were 'all over the
school.' " The educatorlfink reported that his students believed
the dirty lyrics came from "a college somewhere." But even he
admitted interest in them was dying out. Then in April, yet an-
other Sarasota teacher/rat surfaced. This new snitch told the
G-man, "The obscene portions of the written lyrics corre-
sponded to the slurred portion of the record," a pretty wild eval-
uation, since you'd have to be stone deaf not to notice that there
is no part of Jack Ely's "Louie" vocal that isn't slurred.
Preoccupied as it must have been with purifying America by
trying to foil the civil rights movement, the Bureau continued its
stumbling pursuit of rock'n'roll smut. Before the end of March,
as San Diego joined the list of FBI offices investigating the sub-
versive platter, an agent contacted Richard Berry.
Berry went to the FBI office in downtown L.A., where he was
131
told the Bureau was handling the case because the lyrics had
crossed state lines. "They said, 'Well, you know, you could go to
jail,' " Richard told me. "I said, 'For what?' 'Cause we went
down with the sheet music that the Kingsmen had. When the
Kingsmen came out with the record, that's when the first sheet
music came out, and everything was on the sheet. I always knew
that nobody could take your song and turn it around. You know,
you just can't do that." Berry had little else to tell, since his only
current association with the song was his semiannual BMI
check.
The FBI files don't include detailed transcripts of interroga-
tions' so there's no telling who else was threatened in this noble
pursuit of justice. But after a letter to Hammond, Indiana, AUSA
Irvin in May, the Bureau's "Louie" file lapses, without any rec-
ord (up to this point) of discussions with, for instance, Feirtag,
Dennon, Chase, the Kingsmen, or Wand, let alone Rockin'
Robin Roberts or any other significant auxiliaries. Maybe the
G-men were sloppy, maybe the Bureau's still suppressing a couple
tons of documents, but as it stands, the G-men's "Louie" re-
search would barely merit a C on a ninth -grade term paper.
A year later, when cries of dirty duh duh duh. duh duh again
registered, this time from the vicinity of Detroit, the Bureau was
somewhat more alert to the record biz end of the story, perhaps
because the United States had by then been well and truly in-
fested with Beatles and other foreign and domestic long-haired
insurrectionaries making what the memos call "rockin' roll."
At the end of March 1965, just as sap began its annual rise
in all creatures, AUSA Robert J. Grace of Detroit set up a meet-
ing in his office with the FBI, the FCC, and two complaining
parents from suburban Farmington, Michigan. Mom and Pop
brought along the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie." "They stated that
this record has become very popular over the radio stations
which cater to the teenage 'rockin' roll' fans in the greater De-
troit area," the Detroit SAC wrote to his ne. bosses (the Kings-
men's "Louie" enjoyed an annual springtime revival in several
cities throughout the mid-Sixties). The couple also brought
along the dirty words, the Bureau's "Detroit version."
The very next day, as the pull of the sap grew stronger, an-
other educator cried out from an unnamed Michigan school.
132 LOUIE LOUiE
This time, the offending lyrics had been confiscated from a stu-
dent. (So established was the investigation becoming that the
Detroit SAC now referred, with politesse acquired by drawing up
sealed indictments, to "Louis Louis.")
AUSA Grace went ahead on his own and contacted radio sta-
tion WKNR in suburban Dearborn. Wand wired WKNR the real
lyrics, and WKNR passed them to Grace. The Detroit FBI's re-
port concluded by reproducing that innocuous barroom saga,
followed by a single comment: "It is noted that when this record
was played in the Assistant United States Attorney's Office on
3/30/65, it was difficult to get all the words in this song."
Putting its portion of tax revenues to work most scrupulously
and effectively, FBI headquarters a fortnight later sent its Motor
City representative the whole file-everything that had been
generated in the Florida, Indiana, and California investiga-
tions-with the note: "For your information, the Department of
Justice has previously received a copy of the record 'Louie
Louie.' ... The Department advised that they were unable to
interpret any of the wording in the record and, therefore, could
not make a decision concerning the matter."
Here is the FBI at its most brilliant: We don't know what
we're dealing with and it seems to be gibberish, but that gibber-
ish must be presumed guilty until all rampantly paranoid par-
ents and teachers stop believing the fantasies of teenagers suf-
fering from hormonal overload.
As late as May 25, 1965, the Detroit FBI office was trying to
get its N.Y. brethren to sweat a confession out of ScepterlWand.
On June 18, Motown's criminological geniuses sent the FBI lab
yet another copy of the Kingsmen's "Louie," as if intelligibility
might vary from specimen to specimen, with the notation: "The
lyrics contain obscene language." They did?
Well, maybe the virus of duh duh duh. duh duh had infested
the FBI all the way up the chain of command, because no super-
visor ever told the obsessive Detroit troops: "This is a gigantic
waste of time. Knock it off immediately. Bring me a commie."
So by the laws of Instant Karma, within two years the Detroit
SAC had to contend with an actual Communist rock band, the
infamous MC5 and its notorious teenage White Panther fans, a
legion devoted to the political platform succinctly summarized
133
as "Rock'n'roll, dope, and fucking in the streets." Needless to
say, the MC5's repertoire featured "Louie Louie."
Meantime, the "Louie" folk-devil persevered, Motor City ra-
dio stations kept spinning the disc, each year's new ranks of high
schoolers circulated the "real" words, and parents who'd seen
too many episodes of "I Led Three Lives" kept calling the cops.
The June 1965 complaint came from Warren, a tank-manufac-
turing suburb. The Warren source may have been subject to au-
ditory hallucinations, since, according to the FBI memo, he told
AUSA Finn that "the language in the record is clear and un-
doubtedly obscene." Me see Jamaica, moon above?
It was only now that FBI agents finally visited Wand Records,
a call they paid on May 19, 1965. Marv Schlachter remembered
the visit only vaguely. "There's no question that there was con-
tact," he told me. "But I don't think any of us ever had any feel-
ing that we were part of any conspiracy or anything that would
put us out of business." Certainly, he seemed more bemused,
amused, and amazed than frightened or worried about the
course his little Worst Record of the Week had taken. "There
were a number of times when, in effect, the record was banned.
Every time that happened, we would re-release the record and
sell another million," he told me. (Actually, even though esti-
mates range as high as twelve million copies sold, Schlachter
told me that "Louie Louie" initially sold between two and three
million copies, which is more consistent with the mid-sixties rec-
ord market.)
Beginning in June, 1965, J. Edgar Hoover personally received a
letter from a "concerned citizen" in Flint, Michigan.
"As a member of the [blacked out] dedicated in the fight
against pornography," it read in part, "this is how we ... became
involved in a war of legal semantics. It all began this winter when
a group of vocalists called the 'Kingsmen' appeared at a local
hall. They played their million -dollar record, 'Louie Louie.' In a
matter of weeks the record was selling like hot cakes and rising
on the 'Top 40 Show.' We became aware of the dual set of lyrics
and that, without a doubt, someone had masterminded an 'au-
ditory illusion.' Our prosecuting attorney with whom we con-
sulted said, in his opinion, there was nothing legally that can be
13Ci LOUIE LOUiE
done, since he believed you cannot prove which set of lyrics they
are singing. This seemed rather irrelevant since they were capi-
tali zing on its obscenity, and when every teenager in the country
'heard' the obscene not the copywritten lyric.
"Our attempts to have something done about the record were
met with frustration. But that is all prologue. We realize the
damage is done and the 'Louie Louie' purveyors are getting
away with setting a new precedence [sic]. That along with the
movies, the magazines, the paperbacks-our kids will now be hit
with a fourth front: records.
"We have also been in contact with Mr. Lawrence Gubow,
U.S. Attorney in Detroit, and he informed us that your bureau
was investigating the record in question. He wasn't too explicit,
however. Can you tell us what is being done? "What can we do to
help? Mr. Hoover, do you think more of these type records are
inevitable? Is there perhaps a subliminal type of perversion in-
volved?
"In Mr. Gubow's answer to us, he stated that in order for
matter to be declared obscene, it must be 'objectively obscene.' I
am confused. How can anything be objectively obscene? Ob-
scenity is not indifferent, but has definite goals. It is not imper-
sonal and unemotional. How can it possibly be? By its very na-
ture, obscenity is subjective."
There was more, but the nub of it concerned the means
whereby the Flint patriots could do their bit for The Greatest
Country on Earth, and an inquiry as to whether that goal might
be aided by distributing an "obscenity questionnaire" to high-
schoolers.
More efficient or simply better staffed than his underlings,
Hoover wrote back just a week later. "I strongly believe that the
easy accessibility of such material cannot help but divert the
minds of young people into unhealthy channels and negate the
wholesome training they have already been afforded by their
parents," declaimed Clyde Tolson's roommate. "With reference
to the record you described, I am unable to make any comment
concerning current investigations being conducted by the FBI.
You may be assured, however, that this Bureau is continuing to
make every effort to discharge its responsibilities with the high-
est degree of thoroughness and dispatch."
135
A "Backnote," not mailed, on the next page, exhibits Hoov-
er's paranoia in its pure form: "Correspondent is not identifiable
in Bufiles. The record 'Louie Louie' is subject of investigation
under character of Interstate Transportation of Obscene Matter.
Bufiles 145-2961 and 145-2972 contain complaints from nu-
merous individuals, including [blacked out (maybe Lady Bird
Johnson had overheard a dangerous duh duh duh ... coming out
of Lynda Bird's room at the VVhite House?)] regarding this rec-
ord recorded on the Wand label by the Kingsmen. It has copy-
righted lyrics but off-color lyrics are being circulated .... "
Hoover did send the Flint flake copies of the Bureau's pam-
phlets "Poison for Our Youth" and "Combating Merchants of
Filth: The Role of the FBI."
Still, duh duh duh. duh duh throbbed throughout the land.
So, on July 12, the Detroit FBI asked its brethren in New York to
stop by Wand Records and listen to the Kingsmen master, with
special attention to its vocal track. Brother agents in Seattle were
asked to track down Jerry Dennon at the Craig Corporation in
Seattle regarding the circumstances of the misbegetting of
"Louie," while the Bureau brethren congregated within the per-
dition of Los Angeles were sent to track down Richard Berry and
Limax Music.
The Detroit office operated at the request of AUSA Grace,
who proceeded at the behest of Assistant Attorney General Fred
M. Vinson, Jr., who headed the Criminal Division of the Justice
Department. Perhaps Vinson had finally come to the limit of his
patience, but he was also responding to "congressional inquir-
ies" (although no congressional contacts are specified-maybe
the intensified investigation was sparked by blasting "Me gotta
go!" from the family hi-fi?). Grace told the Detroit agents that
Vinson wanted "to bring the case to a logical conclusion," which
shows that even Vinson didn't quite get it, since nothing about
"Louie Louie" had ever been colored with the faintest tinge of
logic and the story certainly never had the slightest chance of
being wrapped up on such a note. So off they went, in ones and
twos, each agent bravely pursuing the facts and nothing but.
The importance of accomplishing this task was emphasized
when his fan from Flint once more wrote Hoover on July 14,
partly to report that she'd done some homework, comparing a
136 LOUIE LOUiE
tape of Wand 143 played at "somewhere between 45 and 33113"
with the Kingsmen's June 22 appearance on Shindig in which
"by no stretch of the imagination is the obscene lyric audible,"
but mainly to inquire what J. Edgar thought about the high
school obscenity questionnaire, a question evaded in his reply to
her first letter, and to ask for fifty copies each of the Bureau's
anti-porn pamphlets to distribute to Flint's porn-endangered
young persons.
Notwithstanding the fact that his Flint follower had now ex-
hibited more prosecutive zeal and sounder investigatory method
than any of his field staff (or maybe because she seemed a little
too good at this, which may have suggested to his ever-ripe fear
mechanism that she could be a KGB plant), Hoover's response
was to generate a Bureau report on her subversive potential. This
investigation netting nothing indictable, Hoover wrote back on
July 27, dismissing the idea of the FBI getting involved in the
questionnaire and sending twenty-five copies each of "Poison for
Our Youth" and "Combating Merchants of Filth: The Role of
the FBI," because the Bureau could not afford the bundles of
fifty requested.
It took the New York agents until August 23 to reach Wand,
where, without a court order, Florence Greenberg handed over
a copy of the Kingsmen's master tape. (She refused to give up
the more valuable original tape without a subpoena, perhaps
fearing an FBI bootlegging scam.) To their disappointment, the
agents learned that Wand had only a one-track master, so there
was no separate vocal track to listen to. (If there had been, the
agents wouldn't have been there because Ely's giraffe-neck gab-
ble could have been mixed clearly.)
The FBI lab got the copy of Wand's master on September 16
and compared it to the sample disc sent from Detroit. "[N]o au-
dible differences were noted." On September 22, the Bureau
generated a lengthy memo summarizing the entire history of
"Louie" from Berry's composition (without any mention of
Rene Touzet) to the Kingsmen's recording (without any mention
of Jack Ely).
The Bureau inched onward, talking with Berry again (he
sounded aggrieved mainly that his friends were teasing him
about having written a porno tune), and around September 12,
137
someone who seems, from his familiarity with details about the
copyright number (E Eu 471125), Flip, Limax, various cover
versions, and the situation in Shreveport, to be Max Feirtag (al-
though Feirtag told me in 1991 that he'd never been interviewed
by the FBI). Feirtag, if it was he, also helped Hoover's block-
heads understand what should have been obvious from the start:
"Playing a record at a slower speed would slow the music and
speaking pattern down to such an extent that it would be very
difficult to understand."
The Kingsmen got the third degree, one after another, on
September 7, 1965. With only the most minor variations, they
all told the same story: "There was no deliberate attempt to in-
clude any obscenity in the recording and ... only those who want
to hear such things can read it into the vocal."
A more detailed account was obtained from one band mem-
ber; a good guess would be Lynn Easton or Mike Mitchell. This
interview confirms that the Kingsmen "Louie" "was quickly re-
corded with one or two run-throughs and no change in the stan-
dard lyrics." It also recounted how the Kingsmen learned of their
dirty lyrics:
"Around January 15, 1964, the 'Kingsmen' received an in-
quiry from one of the wire services concerning the suggested
obscene wording and were told that the Governor of Indiana had
banned the playing of the record on the air or in any public per-
formance. A month or so before an individual unknown to them
put through a call to a hotel where they were staying and said he
had detected obscenity when the record was played at a rate of
33% rpm rather than the 45 rpm for which it was intended.
"He said they considered this caller had a dirty mind, partic-
ularly since anything spoken at the lesser rpm could not have
been recorded for that speed and would be accidental. ...
"He said there are unintelligible words or sounds in their
vocal where those who want to apparently find the obscenity, but
these were honest vocal effects without thought of intended ob-
scenity and that neither [blacked out] can hear the suggested
obscenity today. He said the result of the action taken by the
Governor of Indiana, and similar publicity, has been to spur sales
of the record but [long black out-two-and-a-half lines]. The
record sold well initially and then fell off until the obscene word-
[38
LOUIE LOUiE
ing rumor spread when sales again soared. The record to date
has sold about 2,000,000 copies."
This Kingsman also pointed out an interesting quirk of the
"Louie Louie" myth: the belief that the dirty lyrics could be
heard only on the 45 version, but not on the LP. In fact, the two
versions were made from the very same master recording.
On November 30, 1965, the Raiders finally talked to the cops,
saying, "With this type of rock'n'roll music, a listener might
think he heard anything being said that he imagined."
Mter that, the whole mess got tossed into the lap of AUSA
Grace in Detroit, who "advised that in his opinion the investi-
gation of instant matter disclosed no evidence of a ITOM viola-
tion and that he was, therefore, recommending that no further
investigation be conducted."
Only then, two years and uncounted tax dollars after it be-
gan, did the Bureau's pursuit of the filthy "Louie Louie" cease.
The file sounds a final, almost mournful note in an October 10,
1966, memo from the FBI lab to the NY SAC, returning the tape
and lyrics sheet obtained from Wand: "You should be guided by
the opinion of the United States Attorney in determining
whether this material should be returned to [blacked out] Wand
Management Corporation, 254 W. 54th Street, New York City."
No one recalls whether the Bureau's New York agents gave it
to them right then or not.
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o the extent that the innocent, teenage Ameri-
can-malt-shop rock'n'roll portrayed on "Ozzie
and Harriet" and "Happy Days" ever existed,
"Louie Louie" was both its purest product and
the engine of its demolition. It was inconceivable that its good-
bad-but-not-evillegend could have erupted at any other time in
139
140 LOUIE LOUiE
the still-fresh history of rock'n'roll except at the instant when the
scene was about to be exploded by British torpedos. But without
"Louie," as music and as folk-devil, the arrival of the Beatles
and the crashing realization that rock'n'roll really was here to
stay would not have seemed so fraught with danger. Although
the role is usually assigned to the assassination of John Kennedy,
it was really "Louie Louie" that prepared the way for the disrup-
tive brilliance of "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your
Hand."
Yet "Louie Louie" in all its undeniable raucousness and du-
bious raunchiness was also the way itself. With "Louie Louie"
rock'n'roll history began a cycle that would repeat itself, only
witl1 the farce preceding the tragedy.
So the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" is both the end of an era-
an era defined by Richard Berry and the Rillera brothers and
Rockin' Robin Roberts and Buck Ormsby and their brethren-
and the beginning of an era - an era characterized by both Lynn
Easton's unceremonious dumping of his fellow band members
and by any teenager's delight in getting the joke the G-men and
vice-principals missed.
The wreckage of that innocence is on frozen display in a
video of a Kingsmen appearance on the old ABC TV series,
"Shindig." Programmed purely according to network standards
and practices, without the faintest taint of intentional scandal or
rebellion, "Shindig" was nevertheless the most subversive show
on TV for the two seasons (1964-1965 and 1965-1966) that it
lasted, simply because it so often presented so much music with
so much anarchic energy.
"Shindig" began with its audience at full shriek and contin-
ued that way for a whole half hour, even if the guest host was an
old-time show biz has-been like Hedy Lamarr (who hosted the
show the Kingsmen did in October 1965). To see a band like the
Sir Douglas Quintet, with Doug Sahm and Augie Meyer already
trailing hair down past their shoulders when the Rolling Stones
still thought twice about concealing their ears; to see Doug Sahm
himself bouncing around like the personification of the startle
reflex; to watch Jackie Wilson assault the TV audience as if he
were in the throes of godly possession; to see all this not in some
I Cf I
Music-TV ghetto but in the heart of network prime time, was to
glimpse a hint of the kind of culture that TV ordinarily erases.
The Kingsmen came to "Shindig" with the one song that
best bespoke such inchoate insurrection and nevertheless
flopped. A great band might have taken the success of "Louie
Louie" as a commandment to continue to Bring the Noise. But
the Kingsmen were not a great band, and they pursued only the
song's puerile notoriety, its cachet as a junior high rumor, and it
made them no more dangerous than Smurfs. Dressed in black
slacks and waist-length white jackets lacking both collars and
lapels, they looked and sounded like they'd become a house
band on a cruise ship-for that matter, as if they were grateful
to have the job. Big-boned Lynn Easton held his mike straight
up as if it were a drumstick that he was unsure whether to bang
or gobble; wearing a newsboy cap that suggested a yacht and not
Bob Dylan, he looked like a Dutch boy in search of a dike to
plug, and he couldn't have moved less gracefully if he'd been
wearing Hans Brinker's silver skates. In the close-ups, Eddie
Haskell also comes to mind; Lynn Easton gives us the first
"Louie" with a smirk.
On "Shindig," the Kingsmen exposed themselves as a nov-
elty act, smarty-pants frat boys with no more imagination than
Doug Clark and His Hot Nuts and less brazen courage than 2
Live Crew. They seem much more in their element in the adver-
tisement in Billboard's 1966 college special, or on the cover of
their album The Kingsmen on Campus, where they appear as the
Lettermen reprogrammed with a quick wink and a lewd, protu-
berant tongue. The Kingsmen had become an irrelevancy, ready
to pass into memory, if not history.
"Louie Louie" refused to go along for the ride. Popping up the
charts over the next few years came a stream of songs based on
one way or another upon Richard Berry's lost masterpiece. Of-
ten, as in "Many Many" and "Sugar Sugar," such sons of
"Louie" used sexual innuendo better than their model. But
"Louie" was now most important as a piece of music-Zappa's
"stock module" -that dozens of songwriters and musicians
called upon in the flash heat of inspiration, a vehicle for gestures
with a particular meaning-in "Louie" 's case, most often a
1L/2
LOUIE LOUiE
joke, though the gag was more often garage-rock subcompet-
ence, or R&B "simplicity" than sniggering sexual innuendo.
The first rewrite of what Zappa calls "the 'Louie' texture"
was Richard Berry's own "Have Love, Will Travel," which the
Buck Ormsby-produced Sonics did to a brilliant, scorched-
throat crisp on 1965's Here Are the Sonics. The next "Louie"
progeny was sired by the Raiders, with "Louie, Go Home." This
putative extension of the "Louie" saga is a pure stage piece, ala
the Isley Brothers' "Shout" or Ray Charles's "What'd I Say,"
although without gospel feeling- Paul Revere and company be-
ing worshippers solely of the transcendence that emerges from
carnal, comic punch lines. In "Louie, Go Home," Louie does
not go to Jamaica or, at least, if he does, we're left with no real
reason to infer it because it's really just a chant, albeit with a
great last line: "Louie, where have you gone?"
England, obviously.
Because the English delight in the belief that they inhabit the
world's most sexually repressive society, their national folk myth
about "Louie Louie" inevitably took the form of denial and ban-
ishment. More than one British rocker will tell you that the
Kingsmen's record was never allowed to be a hit in their fair
land, that "Let's give it to 'em, right now!" was too licentious for
the early sixties mores of pre-swinging London, let alone the
priggish provinces. In the land of its nativity, the governor of In-
diana may have expelled "Louie" from his state's airwaves after
it was already a hit but, the Brits will smugly assure you, the BBC
sanitized the whole nation's airwaves.
Nevertheless, the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" was a U.K. hit.
In 1963, Billboard tracked British hits by reporting the Top 30
hits in the English music weekly, New Musical Express (N.M.E.).
There, "Louie" entered at #29 on February 8, 1964, and
bounced around it for more than a month, rising as high as # 17,
before dropping off the list of March 21. (In the chart published
by Record Mirror, N.M.E.'s competitor, "Louie" reached only
#27 in its seven-week stay.)
In a country then besieged by a series of new pop bands (of-
ten great ones), this was an excellent showing. There was no hint
of a "Louie" -inspired moral panic, the British folk-devil of the
143
moment being the mods, a teen cargo cult, whose members
Frank Roddam's film of the Who's Quadrophenia quite accu-
rately shows dancing their amphetamined arses off to duh duh
duh. duh duh
The impact of "Louie Louie" on British musicians was a true
termite infestation, far more indelible than chart rankings could
have signified, even if the Kingsmen had scored a #1 there. The
Kinks and the Who, two of the most important British Invasion
bands, blatantly based their best early hits on the duh duh duh.
duh duh schematic.
The two groups had several things in common, including the
arch-artistic pretensions of their respective songwriters and (not
undisputed) leaders, Peter Townshend of the Who and Ray Da-
vies of the Kinks. But their most important link was producer
Shel Talmy, an expatriate American from Los Angeles. Talmy
made records that are among the British Invasion's greatest glo-
ries, great trash heaps of barely restrained chaos that sounded
hotter, raunchier, and noisier than any other UK-made discs of
the time.
Greil Marcus describes the Kinks' version of duh duh duh.
duh duh as "chopped and channeled," and the hot-rod lingo
makes sense, because the tempo was also souped up. "You Real-
ly Got Me" isn't necessarily a "Louie" that Richard Berry or
Rene Touzet would recognize. Indeed, Ray Davies claims that he
came up with the riff after seeing Jazz on a Summer's Day, the
film about the Monterey Jazz Festival. Yeah, sure-no sixties
jazzman this side of Sun Ra would have had the guts to tinker
with "Louie Louie" and allow it to be permanently encoded in
a film.
What connects "You Really Got Me" to duh duh duh. duh
duh is its use of gaps and silences, its grouped bursts ofthe I-IV-
V chord sequence, and most of all, the groaning ecstasy and ag-
ony with which Ray Davies recounts the hold love has on him
while his brother, Dave, bashes his guitar.
The idea that the Kinks borrowed, to put it kindly, from Rich-
ard Berry's greatest hit is reinforced by their second stop-time
cluster-chord hit of late 1964, "All Day and All of the Night,"
especially Ray's gabbled "Aw-oh, come on" just before Dave's
scrambled-Dangel solo, both grifted straight outta the Wailers
LOUIE LOUiE
via the Kingsmen. The Kinks went on to commit "Louie Louie"
itself on both their 1965 albums, Kink-Size and Kinkdom, a year
in which they also scored a minor hit with "I Need You," a third
slice off Richard Berry's inspiration.
By the following spring their "Louie" revamp had been
pinched by the Who, who built around it their first single, "I
Can't Explain," albeit with the novel fillip of showcasing Keith
Moon's drums as the lead instrument.
Peter Townshend wrote "I Can't Explain" as much like the
Kinks as he could, in an effort to capture producer Talmy's at-
tention. But he got a bonus from the ripoff, because "Louie" as
riff and rhythm was so extraordinarily flexible. British beat
groups could no longer just colonize American R&B. In the wake
of the Beatles, rock bands were expected to actually come up
with "new" songs, although those songs were still required to
stay within the formal bounds of R&B-based rock'n'roll. "Louie
Louie," or at least duh duh duh. duh duh, became a mighty tem-
plate for constructing such material.
Just how far you could take the basic "Louie" structure was
shown in the Who's third single, which Shel Talmy also pro-
duced. "My Generation" sped up duh duh duh. duh duh almost
beyond recognition (you can hear the theme clearly stated in
John Entwistle's bass solo), surrounding it with clattering drums
and a stuttered Roger Daltrey vocal that defined varieties of frus-
tration including but not limited to the sexual, the socioeco-
nomic, and the existential. At the end of the record, these pent-
up emotions boil over and duh duh duh. duh duh literally ex-
plodes, then rains back down in Townshend's infamous conclud-
ing feedback extravaganza.
Such antics left "Louie" dazed and battered and with no re-
course other than to return to the United States, where it was
being manhandled more gently, if less creatively.
"Louie Louie" wasn't only a song to rewrite. It had become a
song to remake, as near or as far from the Kingsmen or the Wail-
ers or Richard Berry as you dared. In 1964 and 1965 alone, ver-
sions of "Louie" were committed by the Beach Boys (in a ren-
dition so faithful to Berry's Angeleno-revered original that out-
of-towners are still shocked by its decorum); the Angels of "My
Boyfriend's Back" fame; the Bobby Fuller Four's Anglofied
rockabillies, in a medley with those other frat-rock masterworks,
"Farmer John" and "Jenny Lee"; Jan and Dean on Command
Peiformance from the all-time rock-concert movie, The T.A.M.I.
Show (despite the enduring mystery of the song's unaccountable
absence from the film); and the pot-bellied pioneers of North-
west rock, the Ventures.
The best of the era's "Louie"s was created by soul king Otis
Redding, on an album appropriately titled Pain in My Heart.
Redding buttressed the basic beat of "Louie" with a full horn
section. Otis garbles the lyrics so completely that it seems likely
he made up his verses on the spot. He relocates the song to Sat-
urday night in the small-town South, makes it the story of a hot
pickup on date night, and converts the chorus to a cry amounting
to "Mission accomplished!" Redding may have been the only
singer in history who imagined "Louie" as a woman's name.
(Tina Turner, on the other hand, later sang her "Louie Louie"
from his avaricious girlfriend's point of view; Ike and Tina Tur-
ner's version is certainly the only "Louie" in which the forlorn
sailor owns a yacht.)
Otis had it both ways: He kept "Louie" structurally intact,
but he rearranged it to suit his style and sang a story that made
sense in his life, words that must have been especially fitting for
weekend gigs at Southern fraternity parties. This was the typical
gestation of all forms of "frat rock," the raucous, rough-edged,
good-time party music of which festive fifties rockers like "La
Bamba" and "Louie Louie" are the sourcepoint, the Swingin'
Medallions' "Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)," with its rhetor-
ically perfect equation of sex and falling-down drunkenness, the
epiphany, and Animal House, the enduring spectacle.
Frat rock, less a sound than a sensibility and thus more easily
circumscribed than defined, was sometimes made by what Les-
ter Bangs called "garage bands," after the places where such
amateur groups typically practiced their yowls. In the hands and
mouths of most such aspirants, rock music was less than simple.
Coming from bands like the Music Machine (whose "Talk Talk"
used explicit "Louie" elements) and the Blues Magoos (whose
big hit was the protopsychedelic fumble "We Ain't Got Nothin'
Yet"), the stuff was outright crude. But similar yawp also spewed
1C/6 LOUIE LOUiE
from more professional groups like the anything-but-inept
Righteous Brothers (whose "Little Latin Lupe Lu" marked the
second time that their backup musicians, the Rillera brothers,
were on hand for the creation of a protopunk anthem), Mitch
Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and the Sir Douglas Quintet.
Frat rock was based in a variety of Southern, ethnic, and sub-
cultural genres: mainly rhythm and blues, but also Mexican nor-
teno, surf music, Chicago blues, dirty mouth party jokes a la
Doug Clark and the Hotnuts, Redd Foxx and Rusty Warren,
even honky-tonk country. Los Angeles and the Pacific North-
west, Texas and the industrial upper Midwest (especially Detroit
and Chicago) were among frat rock's most important source-
points, although the South's fraternity-party circuit gave it a
name and generated such stellar examples of the form as the
Swingin' Medallions, the Gants ("Roadrunner"), the Gentrys
("Keep On Dancing"), and John Fred and His Playboy Band
("Judy in Disguise"). But even Boston (the Remains, the Bar-
barians) produced a couple.
Whether you called what they did "frat rock" or "garage
rock" or "blue-eyed soul," such ragtag rockers were the princi-
pal American alternative to the British Invasion. Their successes
included? and the Mysterians' "96 Tears," Sam the Sham and
the Pharoahs' "Wooly Bully," the Sir Douglas Quintet's leering
"Shindig" vehicle "She's About a Mover," Cannibal and the
Headhunters' revved up "Land of 1,000 Dances," Mitch Ryder's
various Little Richard-based medleys and his edge-of-coherent
"Sock It to Me" ("every time you kiss me itfeels like a ... "), the
Premiers' "Farmer John," the Barbarians' "Are You a Boy or Are
You a Girl," the Shadows of Knight's (but not Them's) "Gloria,"
the Standells' "Dirty Water," and Count Five's wacked-out Bo
Diddley renovation, "Psychotic Reaction," even soul records like
Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally,"
Tommy Tucker's "Hi-Heel Sneakers," and Parliament's "I
Wanna Testify." Frat rock even had its English analogues in the
Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," the Yardbirds' "I'm
a Man," the Nashville Teens' scabrous "Tobacco Road," and the
Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "Have You Seen
Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows."
Buck Ormsby created some of the greatest examples of frat-
rock sensibility with the crazed nonhit masterpieces he produced
with a young Tacoma-grown group called the Sonics, whose
fuzzbuster guitar and screaming vocals provided the truest and
most perfect link between the deep mysteries of "Let's give it to
'em, right now" and psychedelia rampant.
All these owed a debt-usually a conscious one-to "Louie
Louie." Those of them that didn't borrow the chords or rhythm
of "Louie" drew upon its tough little termite heart, reaching out
for (and at best, actually grasping) its ability to create from some-
thing so utterly simple as that I-IV -V progression and the stupid
story of a lonesome, lovesick sailor a work of towering, mind-
boggling fascination. In the wake of "Louie" trailed bands who
sang "Doo wah diddy diddy," chanted loopy slogans like "Aw-
uh, Baw-ston, yahr mah home," and challenged listeners to
fathom a thing with "two big horns and a woolly jaw." If you had
half a mind, you could trace all of them back to "EI Loco Cha
Cha," and if you had more mind than that, you were overen-
dowed for the project anyhow.
Even if "Louie Louie" didn't sell seven to twelve million copies,
the two to three million it actually sold were supplemented in
the late Sixties by versions made by bands such as the Beau
Brummels (who recorded it twice) and the Challengers, soulsters
like the Checkmates, Ltd., and the Tams, Latin bandleaders in-
cluding Mongo Santamaria, middle-of-the-roaders David
McCallum and Julie London, and pure instrumentalists like
drummer Sandy Nelson, pianists Floyd Cramer and Willie
Mitchell, fuzz guitarist Travis Wammack and clarinetist Pete
Fountain.
By 1970 "Louie Louie" had been a hit for the easy-listening
group the Sandpipers, whose 1966 rearrangement made it
sound like their earlier hit, "Guantanamera"; it had been re-
corded by Wilbert Harrison, the king of "Kansas City," in a
beautiful New Orleans arrangement by Allen Toussaint, and by
the Messengers, a group on Motown's Rare Earth subsidiary, as
brassy bar-band scraggle; there were records by Sweden's The
Flippers, Australian Crawl, a down-under surf band (overopti-
LOUIE LOUiE
mistically titled "The Last 'Louie Louie' "); and by Los Apson,
a fine Mexican garage-rock combo. The primo psychedelicists,
Jefferson Airplane, even played "Louie" live at Fillmore East in
the ballroom daze.
"Louie Louie" inevitably had an effect on reggae; although
that music's roots in other Caribbean music forms are more im-
portant, the lyric's Jamaican milieu provided an obvious entry
point for young musicians from that island who wanted to get it
on in the broader world rock and soul promised.
Toots and the Maytals, the first group to reshape Jamaican
ska and bluebeat into reggae, performed a masterful chatterbox
"Louie" in which the verses are abandoned for free association
("fine little girl" and "me got to" and "me gonna sail the sea"
pop out of the sax-led stew) on their album Funky Kingston. Is-
land Records took Toots Hibberts's improvisation as reason
enough to give him song publishing credit on the album sleeve-
or maybe they just thought "Louie" was some decrepit folk tune
its Kingston-based eccentrics had adapted. (They compensated
by crediting one "R. Berry" with writing Toots's "Funky King-
ston.")
The Kingsmen may have "destroyed" Richard Berry's greatest
song, in the opinion of his South-central L.A. friends, most of
whom had heard it before its composer finally did, but Richard
could never bring himself to feel insulted. "They never looked
at it in a musician's type thing," he told me. "Even if somebody
destroys your song, it was a type of flattery, if somebody picked
up your tune. Let's face it, a lotta artists, especially a lotta black
artists, would not have the recognition today if it wouldn't have
been for an Elvis or even a Pat Boone, you know. If nothing else,
it gave your song prominence ... I couldn't feel that the Kings-
men had did any disservice to me, because my record was in
1956 and they came back in 1963 and did it."
Even though he was scuffling around playing after-hours
gigs for hustlers and poker players in cocktail lounges, Berry
wasn't really mad at anybody, not even the Feirtags, who were
cashing big checks based on his need to get hitched. (The mar-
riage to Dorothy Berry lasted about ten years; Richard would go
through a couple more weddings and divorces.)
Actually, Richard, who listened only to black-oriented soul
and R&B radio stations, had little idea of how widely dissemi-
nated his 1956 B side had become, even after he finally heard
the Kingsmen's record several weeks after it leaped up the
charts. During the post-Kingsmen Sixties, he heard only four
"Louies. "
"Julie London was one," he said. "I heard the Kingsmen,
then I heard the Sandpipers and Rod McKuen, I heard all those
three together. I heard Rod McKuen one time." He didn't hear
Rockin' Robin Roberts do the original "Let's give it to 'em, right
now" until the Eighties.
Of all the "Louie" rewrites, only one caught Berry's ear:
"Wild Thing," the duh duh duh. duh duh extension by New York
songmill craftsman Chip Taylor (who also wrote "Angel of the
Morning," a hit for Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts, another
Spanish Castle crew). "Wild Thing" became a huge hit for an
inept English combo called the Troggs in midsummer 1967.
Philosophical as Richard Berry tried to remain about his es-
trangement from the fruits of his genius, that one burned him.
"I mean, 'Willld thing, duh duh duh,' that's 'Louie Louie' all
over the place."
The Kingsmen are the Cro-Magnons of duh duh duh. duh
duh, but the Troggs (short for "troglodyte," which means a kind
of "prehistoric" cave dweller) are its Neanderthals, men who
play like they're trying to bust solid granite with fingers still stiff
from the Ice Age. If the analogy seems inappropriate because
the Neanderthals didn't have the ability to create art, you've ob-
viously never heard "Wild Thing."
Taylor, a staff writer for April-Blackwood, a large song pub-
lishing company, pieced it together on a summer's afternoon in
New York in 1966. He'd just gotten a call from producer Gerry
Granahan, who pleaded for a song to record with Jordan Chris-
topher and the Wild Ones. Christopher was the boyfriend of Sy-
bil Burton (the woman whom actor Richard Burton dumped for
Elizabeth Taylor); they ran the chic Manhattan discotheque Ar-
thur. Granahan's session was scheduled for the following day.
"That afternoon I had a demo session planned for a country
song. I'd scheduled it at five o'clock in the afternoon and it was,
I guess, around one o'clock when I spoke to Gerry Granahan,"
150 LOUIE LOUiE
Taylor told Bob Shannon and John Javna for their book, Behind
the Hits. "I didn't have anything until around four o'clock, and
then I started to get this little riff going on the guitar, and be-
tween my office at April-Blackwood and the studio, which was
about four blocks, I was humming this crazy little thing, 'Wild
thing, you make my heart sing,' and just had this groove going."
At the studio, Taylor told the engineer to keep the tape rolling
while he charged through his new tune. He kept a steady beat
on his guitar: duh duh duh. duh duh distorted to the brink of
psychedelia. Over this Chip improvised the verses, using the
"Wild thing" line as a chorus. His demo lasted six minutes, in-
cluding a solo played by engineer Ron Johnson on his hands.
Taylor and Johnson spent a few minutes editing the tape before
moving on to the country tune.
The next morning Taylor sent over the tape. But when
Granahan cut the song, he added a horn section and messed
with the beat. The Jordan Christopher project died, and Taylor
gave instructions that no one else was to hear the demo.
Despite those orders, a copy fell into the hands of Dick James
Music, April-Blackwood's aggressive English associate. The
Troggs picked it out of a pile of about fifty other demos. The next
thing Chip Taylor knew, his monstrosity was topping the charts
from coast to coast and across the seas.
The Troggs' "Wild Thing" opens with an extended guitar
glissando and then explodes into a bass-heavy stomp: "duh duh,
duh duh, duh duh," like "Louie" on Quaaludes. "Wild thing!
You make my heart sing," chants leader Reg Presley. "You make
every-thing ... groov-y. Wild thing." It's the sound of a man
with a rocket in his pocket, a guy so horny he's gotta be careful
how he moves, lest he set himself off. And after a couple of cho-
ruses it resolves into an impression of Ron Johnson's handclap
solo, played on something called an ocarina, which results in a
sound like what you'd get from gargling stagnant spittle, a solo
so insipid that even the unforgettably weeny way Reg's voice re-
turns ("Wild thing, I think you move me," he tries to croon,
sounding like a first-rate nerd) cannot begin to reduce its mem-
ory.
Art it may not possess, but in its own way "Wild Thing" is a
rock'n'roll classic. The way it descends to lower depths with each
151
bar is so astonishing, its unending thud so remorseless (the
Troggs aren't playing this way because it's effective, even though
it is-they're doing it because they can't think of anything else),
that it just about takes your breath away, clouds your vision,
brings unbidden moistness to the corners of your eyes. Of
course, these symptoms might be nothing more than a neurolog-
ical reaction to the axe murder of Western musical civilization,
but let's cut the clowns some kind of break.
The Troggs didn't even get to do the greatest version of "Wild
Thing." Jimi Hendrix did. Hendrix featured "Wild Thing" at
the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, his band's American debut, and
he literally burned it up.
Jimi played "Wild Thing" the way he often played pop songs,
wih'I a mixture of malice and glee. He knew exactly what he was
doing, too, for as a true son of Seattle, he had long studied the
sacred art of "Let's give it to 'em, right now."
Once you know the legend of the Wailers at Castle and the
facts of Jimi's attendance there, the lyrics of his "Spanish Castle
Magic" seem haunted by homesick nostalgia. "It's very far away,
it takes about half a day / To get there, if we travel by my ah ...
dragonfly," he sings, in the voice of a kid stranded a couple of
continents from home. (It's tempting to wonder if Hendrix didn't
write his later song "Castles Made of Sand" -which, he de-
clares, "slip into the sea, eventually" - after learning of the Cas-
tle's demolition.)
Hendrix recorded "Wild Thing," and he recorded "Louie" 's
distaff soulmate, the Van Morrison-penned "Gloria," but he
never committed his own version of "Louie Louie" to wax. Or
maybe it's best to say that he hid his most direct relationship to
the rock'n'roll anthem of his native region.
On the hipster rock scene, the reputation of "Louie"
crashed. It wasn't sophisticated. It was intoxicating, but defi-
nitely not psychedelic. Torn between the need to explode on the
scene as a total original and the desire to "give it to 'em, right
now," Jimi pulled one of his favorite tricks: He turned "Louie"
into an allusion quoted so abstractly that nobody guessed it.
But it's right there at the top of his first American hit. The
way you probably remember it, "Purple Haze" opens with an
152 LOUIE LOUiE
explosion of crazed guitar, the likes of which had never been
heard before. But not quite-Hendrix doesn't just burst in. Jimi
staged a drama. "DUH. duh. DUH. duh. DUH. duh. DUH. duh, "
the record begins. Then: "duh duh duh. duh duh duh." By add-
ing so many stops, then suddenly removing them, Hendrix con-
trasts "Louie" with his own vision, rupturing the link just before
his voice "gives it to 'em, right now!"
"Purple Haze" took the idea of reconstructing "Louie
Louie" and put it on a rocket to the stars, light years beyond the
wildest dreams of Richard Berry, Rockin' Robin Roberts, or any-
body else who'd ever frequented the Harmony Ballroom, the
Castle, or, for that matter, any of the swinging London joints
where "My Generation" was common currency. But the means
of propulsion was still duh duh duh. duh duh.
The next few muscial trends left "Louie" in the lurch. Duh duh
duh. duh duh was the antithesis of the folkish singer/songwriter
movement. The era of heavy-metal groups fantasizing orgies
eclipsed the now-seemingly-innocent fable of the song's dirty
lyrics. The FBI's most prominent rock'n'roll investigation of the
Seventies was its role in the attempt to deport John Lennon, not
as a merchant of porn-with-a-beat, but as a left-wing political
conspirator.
Yet "Louie Louie" could never be exterminated from the
heart of rock'n'roll. To prove it, in 1973 "Brother Louie" leaked
out of England.
"Brother Louie" originated with Hot Chocolate, a London-
based mixed-race pop combo. Hot Chocolate initially appeared
on the Beatles' Apple label with a version of "Give Peace a
Chance," before moving on to RAK Records, run by U.K. power-
pop entrepreneur Mickie Most, who'd made hits with both the
schlocky and the inspired: Herman's Hermits and the Animals,
Donovan and Jeff Beck, Lulu and Suzi Quatro.
In Hot Chocolate's Errol Brown and Tony Wilson, Most
found a writer of distinctive melodies and strongly sentimental
lyric dramas ("Emma," "You Sexy Thing," "Every l' s a Win-
ner") to couple with an extravagantly dramatic singer with a
built-in melismatic tremble. The pairing turned Hot Chocolate
153
into one of the BBC's staple commodities; several of the group's
series of UK. hits also climbed the Yank charts.
-when "Brother Louie" appeared in 1972, listeners found its
"Louie" connection less noteworthy than its subject matter: in-
terracial sex. Brown's Louie was a brown boy in love with a white
girl; she reciprocated his affections, but her parents forcibly dis-
approved. "Brother Louie" eschewed the platitudinous liberal-
ism of Janis Ian's 1967 "Society's Child." It made the British Top
10 in the spring of 1973.
But Britain only pioneered the trade in chattel slaves; Amer-
ica lives with its legacy. -when "Brother Louie" fell into the
hands of Stories, a New York-based art-pop group, a few months
after its British success, they reversed the lyric's roles: A white
guy fell in love with a black girl: "She was black as the night /
Louie was whiter than white." Since the guy still sang it, the
listener was now asked to identifY with the pain of the white kid,
robbing the punch line, "Ain't no difference if you're black or
white / Brothers, you know what I mean" of its bitter irony. For
that very reason, the lyric alteration proved essential to the suc-
cess of "Brother Louie" in America. Few American taboos out-
rank the prohibition of sex between white women and black
men.
Michael Brown formed Stories after having the Left Banke,
where he'd composed the wimp-rock monument "Walk Away,
Renee." Stories also featured singer Ian Lloyd. The group
picked up a drummer and guitarist and signed to Kama Sutra
Records, but the temperamental Brown left during the recording
of the second album. In part, he rebelled against producers
Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise, who wanted to bring in outside
material that might have a chance of getting on the radio and
selling, like "Brother Louie."
Kama Sutra released the Stories version of "Brother Louie"
in June 1973-almost exactly a decade after the Kingsmen's in-
toxicated duh duh duh. duh duh. It hit the chart on June 23, and
for two weeks in August, it resided at # 1, an extraordinary feat
for a record that had trouble being heard in the South.
Its new arrangement couldn't be denied even in Dixie. Ker-
ner and Wise's production gave the tune a Carole King-style
singer/songwriter piano-bass-drums groove. There was no hint
15,q
LOUIE LOUiE
of stop-time, let alone duh duh duh. duh duh. But the spirit of
"Louie Louie" had returned. In its root emotion, the yearning
for a lover to whom the singer is denied access, "Brother Louie"
is one of the truest heirs Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" ever had.
The soft but intense chorus - "Loo-ee, loo-ee, loo-ee, loo-eee-
ee / Loo-ee loo-ee loo-ee loo-ay / Loo-ee loo-ee loo-ee / Loo-ee
loo-ee, you're gonna cry" -was shadowed by an irony hardly less
bitter than the one Errol Brown intended.
Stories proved no more able to sustain itself at this level than
the Kingsmen. "All of a sudden we had a big hit with a song that
did not represent our music and the direction we were trying to
go in," Lloyd later whined to Russell Weiner of Triad. "I didn't
think it would affect me that much, but it did." Mter one more
album, and no more hits, Stories split.
On Top 40 radio, "Brother Louie" represented the last overt ep-
isode of the "Louie Louie" saga. But that reflected the renewed
isolation of termite rock'n'roll from mainstream pop more than
it did any waning of the power of duh duh duh. duh duh. Indeed,
"Louie Louie" can be found at the core of one of pomp rock's
most majestic monuments.
In the early Seventies, Tom Scholz, a senior product manager
at Polaroid Corporation in suburban Boston, began to devote all
his excess income to equipping a very elaborate home studio.
Scholz, a guitar player with a degree in mechanical engineering
from MIT, by all accounts reincarnated the techno-nerd side of
Rockin' Robin Roberts. For the better part of six years, Scholz
worked and reworked at taping a set of songs he'd written. It was
true solo work, done by one man and an increasingly elaborate
array of machines.
Although The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock &: Roll
lumps Boston into a one-line "art rock" dismissal, Scholz's taste
wasn't nearly so arty as other high-tech one-man rock bands like
Frank Zappa and Pete Townshend, or even Stevie Wonder. True,
his music reflected an obsessive delight in texture, but those tex-
tures were for the most part, quite consciously coarse, not
smooth and harmonically overdeveloped like the art rock of
Kansas or Yes. Like a true termite, Tom Scholz devoted all those
slack hours from Polaroid trying to perfect a one man band con-
155
cept whose roots were in the nasty grunge grind of heavy metal:
thunderous chords from multiple guitars, often supplemented
with and distorted through synthesizers and other pieces of elec-
tronic gimcrackery, set against uplifting melodies and huge,
bashing beats. Or, to follow the outline Scholz once gave, "power
guitars, harmony vocals, and double guitar leads."
Around those tapes, Scholz built a nominal group, high-
lighted by the extraordinary singer Brad Delp. With technocratic
bonhomie, they called themselves Boston. Signed to Epic Re-
cords, they produced an album that primarily consisted of the
demo tapes. Out of its polished melodic maelstrom leaped a sin-
gle tune, the anthemic "More Than a Feeling." It opened with
Led Zeppelin -like acoustic guitar banging into drum thunder,
then unfolded a Who-style melodic passage before exploding
into its gorgeous chorus, on which both guitar and voices soar.
Underpinning that chorus was a beat so familiar it plain took
your breath away: "duh duh duh. duh duh. " it proclaimed. "Duh
duh duh. duh duh. "
Scholz encoded "Louie" into "More Than a Feeling" so or-
ganically that perhaps only fellow guitarists realized what he'd
done. But those mighty strains of duh duh duh. duh duh. inhabit
its grooves unto this very day as "More Than a Feeling" is recy-
cled every 12 hours on album-rock radio stations across Amer-
ica. Now, that's termite culture.
12
II:;.. o-uiell
'lk 1 G!, tRat we rniJ..-uJVia-!.&cd weR

16/ 1918
I
f you ask a lot of termites, the early Seventies was the
greatest sinkhole rock'n'roll ever fell into. "Under-
ground rock" splintered the rock scene into a dozen
fragments: Europhile art-rockers, laid-back singer!
songwriters, head-banging metal-heads, hirsute Southern boo-
giers, unctuous post-soul crooners, weeny dance-pop fashion
slaves, post-melodic noise worshippers, fearsome funkateers and
156
157
snarling punks. It was rock'n'roll hell: All nicknamed it; none
could claim it. At the top of the heap, music became corpora-
tized, mechanical, heartless. But even so-called "corporate rock"
consolidated nothing of importance except profit and airtime.
One result was the restoration of the color line against contem-
porary black pop.
Down the economic, if not artistic, scale a few steps rock be-
came peripheral, formless, exclusionary. All that such anarchic
elitism accomplished was the alienation of any consensus that
might have overturned the hegemony of the commercial. This
"alternative" roomful of synthetic blends also bleached itself
lily-white.
At the bottom, grubbing for elbow room and airspace, lay an
audience all but stunned into silence. Rock fans went from being
active participants capable of raising forbidden faces into the
spotlight to a puling wad not forced but willing to choose among
slim pickings without a peep of protest. Even rebellion had been
codified and, within the codes, circumscribed.
You can feel the new pop order in all its frustrating malig-
nancy in singer/songwriter Tim Buckley's 1974 "Wanda Lu," a
track from his final studio album, Look at the Fool. Its beat sum-
moned duh duh duh. duh duh. But Buckley replaced the "Let's
give it to 'em, right now!" spirit with bitter cynicism. Both the
vocal ("Wanda Lu, could you ever be true" goes the chorus) and
the guitar playing sound forced. It's a love song without a trace
of love, a sex song without a hint of affection. Yet, it's still
"Louie" at its core and somewhere in the background, a shout
or two suggests somebody remembers how much lift it could
provide.
Whatever else you can say about it, "Wanda Lu" is certainly
no fun. It sounds like a record made from pure spite-maybe
Buckley's handlers told him his mystic-visionary repertoire
needed a song that had a prayer of being played on the radio.
Maybe Buckley was just in the mood to tell the world to fuck off.
Whatever caused it, "Wanda Lu" waves "Louie" in the face of
gloom and, unlike any previous "Louie," it never comes close to
shaking off those bad vibes. Which makes it the pure product of
its time.
But the true depths of alienation, the dark caverns of despair
158 LOUIE LOUiE
into which the soul of duh duh duh. duh duh now descended
could be fully encompassed only in the tongue of a singer whose
most shining moments incarnate nihilism. Through that singer,
Iggy Pop, and his band, the (once Psychedelic) Stooges, "Louie
Louie" entered its darkest hour.
Not only squares missed the point. "You know, I heard one
by Ziggy and the Stooges or something," said Richard Berry.
"Oh man, it's somethin' else. He's talkin' 'bout the whole 'fuck
you in your black ass,' you know. This was a live recording. And
I heard him say, well, if you want to throw some rotten eggs up
here, we're ready. Jee-sus, man!"
Iggy and the Stooges shaped their sound and sensibility in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, a college town on the fringes of Detroit,
just as the postwar prosperity of Autoworld disintegrated, first in
the anarchy of the Detroit riots during 1967's "summer oflove,"
then in the aftermath of OPEC. The Motor City's working class
went from being the richest in the world to double-digit unem-
ployment with a barely discernable transition. The three albums
Iggy and the Stooges made between 1969 and 1973- The
Stooges, Funhouse, and Raw Power- comprise a sonic account of
their home territory's all-front (economic, social, political, spiri-
tual) collapse. Since that collapse ultimately took on national
and worldwide dimensions, these albums, for all their crudity,
now rank among the most profound and powerful records ever
created.
The Stooges began as the little brother band of the revolution
rockers, the MC5, but Iggy and his gang flipped the coin: They
didn't advocate revolt; they acted revolting. The Five's essential
message boiled down to agit-prop optimism, but the Stooges
were having none of it. The Stooge perspective was summed up
in their anthem: "No Fun." Spanish Castle Magic turned black
in their hands.
The Five's emcee, Brother 1. C. Crawford, ranted: "Brothers
and sisters, it's time for each and every one of you to decide
whether you are gonna part of the problem or whether you are
gonna be part of the solution."
"Problem," the Stooges replied without dropping a beat (for
the first and only time in their careers). They proceeded to slash
long, droning scars across the musical landscape with chordless,
159
feedback-clouded credos like "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and
"Search and Destroy."
Thus the Stooges in all their infamy marched across America
and on into several seasons of expatriatism in England and Eu-
rope, earning the derision of everybody who knew anything
about music, but inspiring deep devotion from the few who heard
within this silly, sassy alienation the throbbing pulse of the all-
but-lost duh duh duh. duh duh. In 1969 they received the most
gruesome reviews of any band in the history of rock criticism; by
1975, they were darlings of the music press. By 1976, they were
falling apart, several members having dug deep holes in the
crooks of their arms as they dealt with the actuarial tables like
an escalator that knew only one direction - straight down. As his
band imploded, Iggy took to playing straightman for audiences
that avidly missed the point: A bottle would break near the stage,
he'd slash his chest with the shards and receive the greatest ap-
plause of his career.
The Stooges played their final show at the Michigan Palace,
a Detroit theatre, on the cold night of October 6, 1976 (frigid
indoors, no matter what it was like outside), with Iggy on vocals,
accompanied by guitarist James Williamson, electric pianist
Scott Thurston, Ron Asheton (their original guitarist) on bass,
and his brother Scott (alk/a Rock Action) on drums, before an
audience of bikers and other denim and leather louts. That show
ranks among rock's all-time debacles-it is an Altamont of the
heart, the Devil's own amateur night, without the mercy of a
hook waiting in the wings. The songs-which included such
gems as "Rich Bitch" and "Cock in My Pocket" -disappeared
in livid anti-Stooges tumult, met with barrages of over-ripe fruit,
vegetable, egg, and beer. The full battle wound up encoded upon
the quasi-bootleg album Metallic KO-and never has a record-
ing been more aptly titled.
Even decades later the completeness with which this audi-
ence and this artist fail to comprehend one another remains
awesome. Iggy manages to complete "Cock in My Pocket," but
the song goes nowhere. It would, in the mind of anyone who
respected his own life, be risky to continue antagonizing this au-
dience. The tape reveals his courage and stupidity.
"Aww, it'll all be over soon," he yells, then moans like a
160 LOUIE LOUiE
schoolkid playing war-the artillery's coming in. "I won't fuck
you when I'm workin'," he notes to someone in the crowd who
has proposed something along those lines.
"Anybody with any more ice cubes, jelly beans, grenades,
eggs they wanna throw at the stage, c'mon. You paid your money,
so you takes your choice, y'know."
The pianist plays random notes, no chords. The bass and gui-
tar futz around with pick noise and feedback. Iggy is silent. Sud-
denly' he speaks again, perhaps to the band: "But when they
throw eggs, you always say they throw 'em at me." Then, once
more addressing these very active spectators:
"Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big hand for Mr. James
Williamson on guitar, right here." The Ig pauses, as if anticipat-
ing gasps of recognition. "Rock Action on drums . . . Ronald
Frank Asheton on bass ... A big hand for Mr. Scott Thurston on
piano, vocals, and harmonica. And let's not forget your favorite
well-mannered boy, the singer. Let's hear it for the singer."
Silence at the mike.
"I am the greatest." Another silence.
"Thanks for the eggs. Thank you for the eggs-do we have
any more eggs? More eggs! What am I bid for a dozen eggs?"
At least that many come flying at him. "Aw, y'missed! C'mon,
try it again! C'mon . . . Listen, I been egged by better'n you.
C'monnow.
"Is it time for a riot, girls? RIOT!" A pause. Guitar tuning.
Another air strike, perhaps. Direct hit, apparently: "Let's get a
towel for the egg yolk. I don't want to get caught with yolk in my
face." He smacks his lips, then in strangled falsetto: "Awh, baby,
c'mon. Mommma, Mommmma, Mommmma.
"Light bulbs, too! Paper cups?" Something hits a guitar. "Oh
my, we're getting violent.
"Well, there's two guys left the stage. Well, we'll all have to
leave, we'll see ya later." Another silent moment, then Iggy's
back at the mike, speaking in an accent that crosses your basic
Sylvester Stallone and a retarded version of the New York Dolls.
"Uh, thank you, ladies and gentlemen." A pause. "Whaddya
wanna hear?" A slightly longer pause. Then he switches back to
his normal voice; inspiration has arrived.
"I think a good song for you would be a fifty-five-minute
161
'Louie Louie.' " To the band: "Let's give 'em an extra and do
'Louie.' .. ." To the crowd, like a beleaguered parent: "Would
you rather we ran through our programmed set that looked real
slick[!], or would you rather we just did 'Louie Louie?' "
The crowd responds as before; more of that seemingly end-
less supply of projectiles smash into the stage and the band.
" 'LOUIE LOUIE!' " Iggy screams, and the band throws it-
self into a punkish duh duh duh. duh duh. "I never thought it'd
come to this, baby!" he mutters, and then simply rides the piano
chords and fuzzy guitar for a moment until, with a shrill
"Owwwww!" he begins his climactic "Louie," singing the words
as he remembered them from junior high:
Louie, Louie, away I go now
Louie, Louie, said away I go
Fine little bitch, she waits for me
Just a whore across the way
Every night I take her, park all alone
She ain't the kind I lay at home
Louie, Louie, away I go now
Louie, Louie, said away I go
Let's give it to 'em, right now
Williamson plays a deranged, fuzzy guitar solo; it sounds
skillful at first, then falls apart. In the Stooges' first audible act
of wisdom all night, he retreats to the basic chords.
"Take it down!" Iggy cries. "Take it way down! Ah, take it
down," he shrieks. "Now listen to me."
She got a rag on so I move above
It won't be long before she'll take it all
I feel the rose down in her hair
Her ass is black and her tits are bare
Louie, Louie, away I go now
Louie, Louie, said away I go
Away I go now!
Away I go now!
162
Away I go now!
Let's go!
LOUIE LOUiE
The music crashes to its conclusion as Iggy shouts, "They
threw a Stroh's!"
Mter the last drone dies out, he returns and stands at the
mike amidst the rubble to offer a few final thoughts:
"Ladies and gentlemen, 'Louie Louie' ... Thank you very
much to the person who threw this glass bottle. You nearly killed
me, but you missed again. But keep tryin' next week."
The last sound heard on the record is broken glass being
kicked by a boot leaving the stage.
The Stooges broke up a few days later. Improbably, "Louie"
survived.
The song "Louie Louie" was in the film Animal House because
in 1962 it would be the song the Deltas would sing. The screen-
play always indicated that "Louie Louie" be playing long before
John Belushi was involved with the project. John's version of
"Louie Louie" is the one heard in the film and is available on
the soundtrack album.
Your story that the song was the accompaniment to John's
first sexual experience I'm afraid I cannot verify, as I wasn't
there. However, I can state unequivocally that almost everything
printed about John since his death is bullshit.
- Letter from film director John Landis to Eric Predoehl,
editor, The Louie Report, September 4, 1984
But unless Belushi's BIuto BIutarsky and his companions at
the Delta Tau "Animal House" attended school in the Pacific
Northwest (and Faber College is specifically identified as being
in the Northeast), "Louie Louie" would certainly not have been
what they were singing in 1962, since the Kingsmen didn't hit
until 1963. Yet when BIuto teaches "Louie" to the Delts' incom-
ing pledge class, he already knows the dirty words.
There's only one way that could have happened, and that's if
the Delta "Animal House" of Faber College wasn't fictional-if
it was the 1962 Delts of Dartmouth (the school on which Faber
is based) who secretly originated the "Louie" lyrics legend. Is it
possible BIuto and Otter and their classless pals dreamed up
163
such a scam and just waited for the right pack of hapless
rock'n'roll suckers to appear on the airwaves? Could it be that in
1978 their successors dreamed up Animal House to see how
much more they could get away with?
Okay, that's too good to be true even in this tale. But what
was there about Animal House that wasn't farfetched-including
its role in reviving the sacred secrets of duh duh duh. duh duh?
Animal House originated with the National Lampoon, the
post-hippie humor magazine. It reflects the Lampoon style be-
fore it became not merely insensitive, but belligerently revealing
of its true subject matter, the mainly petty angers of the white
male hipster-supremacists who wrote and edited it.
In Animal House the portrayals of women, Italians, and
blacks reflect a new species of resentment that matured into Lee
Atwater's Willie Horton commercial. Since Landis's directorial
signature is using excess as compensation for lack of comedic
timing and narrative coherence, the movie hasn't held up well-
as an early Sixties nostalgia piece, it's just too Seventies.
The project succeeded for one reason: comedian John Belu-
shi, who made his national reputation even before joining "Sat-
urday Night Live" 's "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," as a
cast member of the troupe that toured with the Lampoon's
rock'n'roll farce, Lemmings.
Cruelty and rage also provided the basis for Belushi's hu-
mor-in Lemmings his star turn consisted of an impression of
Joe Cocker as a helpless spastic-but when he became engulfed
in a characterization (most often, in one touching on music), he
mesmerized audiences like a hurricane concoction of charisma
and recklessness. Rather than compelling the suspension of dis-
belief, Belushi shoved his audience's face in it; his best bits al-
ways inspired the reaction, "I don't believe this shit!"
In Animal House Belushi plays Bluto Blutarsky as an all-but-
insensate slob whose primitive impulsiveness incarnates the an-
archic energy that every "sane" force at Faber College fears, de-
spises, and tries to stamp out. He's the guy who starts the food
fight in the cafeteria, then ducks out when it erupts; he's the
consummate goldbrick, still in college, after seven years of not
studying, because it's a way out of the draft (which proves he's
not dumb); Bluto's response to a threat of expulsion is "Toga!
16ct
LOUIE LOUiE
Toga! Toga!" -a demented demand that the frat hold an orgi-
astic party. Bluto's destiny is to come up with one tremendous
scam after another; his doom is to have each of them backfire;
his solution is to drink himself blind. Given Belushi's early
checkout at the end of a smack needle, it's impossible not to read
Bluto Blutarsky as autobiographical.
Is he funny? If a man with a mouthful of mashed potatoes
imitating a zit is your idea of a good joke, he's hilarious.
Inevitably, Bluto's-and thus the movie's-theme song is
"Louie Louie." As the two dweeb pledges walk up to Animal
House for the first time, a headless mannequin flies through a
second -story window and lands at their feet in a hail of shattered
glass, and duh duh duh. duh duh fills the soundtrack. A second
later Bluto makes his entrance, unlocking the door and ushering
the dweebs into the chaotic party inside. "Louie Louie" plays
twice more during the ensuing 10-minute party scene. Later, on
pledge night, it's Blutarsky the pledgemaster who seals the ini-
tiation ceremony by leading everyone in a "Louie" complete
with dirty lyrics (of which the most distinguishable line is "Each
night at ten, I lay her again ... ").
A Belushi "Louie" even got released as a single from the
soundtrack album: a rinky-dink romp sung in the hoarse,
squeaky voice Belushi later made famous with the Blues Broth-
ers. But Belushi didn't record the Bluto version-he sang the
original lyrics. The record's high point thus became the conclud-
ing bellow, "Right now!" But it doesn't sound like Bluto; it
doesn't even sound much like Belushi.
Wretched as Belushi's record was, the new "Louie" at least
brought "Let's give it to 'em, right now!" back to the charts-or,
at least, it would have if Belushi hadn't replaced that line with
an unintelligible scream. The disc hit #89 on the Billboard
chart, where it rested for the entire month of October 1978.
Part of the hype, as the Landis letter to Predoehl indicates,
was that Belushi insisted on singing "Louie Louie" in his mo-
tion picture debut, ostensibly because he revered the number as
the soundtrack to the moment when he lost his virginity in the
backseat. Maybe he did or maybe he didn't (it would be impos-
sible to set the story straight if Belushi had lived and the humor-
less Robert Woodward hadn't become his posthumous biogra-
165
pher). Anyway, Belushi didn't have anything to do with putting
the song in the picture. That honor fell to soundtrack producer
Kenny Vance, a veteran New York studio rat, who took charge of
all the movie's rock'n'roll elements.
Iggy and Belushi, Metallic KG, and Animal House were mere
sideshows amid the glittering fragments of mid -Seventies super-
stardom. The broader picture of the period comes clear in the
contrast between punk and disco: raging, ragged, anti-social,
amateur-hour rhythmic chaos pitted against cool, machine-
glossed, fashionable, ultra-pro metric discipline. True, in less
than a decade, punk wiped off the sweat and cleaned up its act,
while disco denizens toned down a peg and picked up on the
aesthetic of rage; then dance-rock and hip-hop ruled the Eight-
ies. But in their heyday, only a fool or a music critic (pardon the
redundancy) would have tried to keep an ear in both camps. But
the legacy of duh duh duh. duh duh penetrated both.
In style and attitude, punk's "Louie" lineage couldn't have
been clearer. The path from the Wailers, the Kingsmen, and the
Sonics to the MC5 and the Stooges to the New York Dolls and
the Patti Smith Group (all of whom executed various live ver-
sions of "Louie") to the Ramones, the Clash, and the Sex Pis-
tols - and from that trio to a whole universe of unheralded
groups and clusters of do-it-yourself anti-musicians-is a bee-
line. The crazy happenstance of duh duh duh. duh duh shaped
the backbone of punk spirit and the FBI's blinkered goose chase
through the "Louie" archives epitomized the genre's ambition:
to create a spectacle revealing the imaginative bankruptcy of so-
ciety, particularly as expressed in conventional concepts of "cul-
ture" and "morality."
To the entrepreneurs and paragons of punk, "Louie" offered
a trove of possibility, yet "Louie Louie" as a trope made virtually
no appearance during the punk rock heyday and the couple of
efforts that found their way to wax (the Bloodclots' 1977 affray,
for instance) don't amount to much. "Louie" served punk as the
hounds of the Baskervilles served Sherlock Holmes: It was the
dog that didn't bark, a blank spot that ought to have been filled.
"Louie" 's virtual absence in punk resulted first and fore-
most from simple musical practicality. The essence of "Louie
166
LOUIE LOUiE
Louie" is that stop-time rhythm: duh duh duh. duh duh. But
punk's sonic purpose was to obliterate all the stops. Punk's
greatest groups, the Clash and the Sex Pistols, built themselves
around rhythmic slashes and smears respectively, and they had
no time for anything requiring so much tinkering with bar lines.
The Kingsmen changed "Louie" profoundly just by omitting a
rest; the Pistols and the Clash took it the rest of the way and
wiped out all the spaces between the beats-the rhythmic basis
of punk amounted to duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh
duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh until
either the performer or the audience dropped from exhaustion
or rebelled at the stasis.
Echoes of "Louie" crop up nevertheless: On the first Clash
album, in the distressed reggae- "Duh-duh-duh duh-duh-
duh"-of "Remote Control" and as a ghost behind the forcebeat
of "Garageland" (an ode to all the bands the Kingsmen's sub-
competence inspired: "25 players! 1 guitar!") and on Never Mind
the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols as a faint glimmer behind the
jackboot beats of "Problems," "Submission," "17," and "Bod-
ies," a quartet of songs whose anti-physical bile might be con-
strued as a series of attempts to write a song that's genuinely as
obscene as the rumors made "Louie Louie." These songs catch
a glimpse of what "Louie Louie" used to stand for back in the
days when a battle of the bands amounted to an invitation to
rumble.
VVhen punk iconoclasts finally constructed a "Louie," they
naturally declined to conform to tradition. Chrissie Hynde and
the Pretenders' 1981 "Louie Louie"-from Pretenders II-con-
nects with the original only through her concluding bark, "Right
now!" Otherwise, it's a wholly different song.
The same year, the California-based "hard-core" punk band
Black Flag slowed down long enough to assay an actual "Louie."
"Louie Louie" is, in fact, as close to a rock'n'roll classic as the
bitter, muscular Black Flag ever came. Led by the extremely
rowdy and obnoxious Henry Rollins, an artiste whose self-de-
structiveness let to a mutual admiration pact with John Belushi,
Black Flag are the first and only band ever to scare the producers
of "Saturday Night Live" into using censorious tape delay, to
preserve NBC's federal license. On "Louie Louie" Rollins sang
167
with a blistered voice against hot-coal chords, replacing the verse
with a confession that owed its soul to the spirit of Rockin' Robin
Roberts and "Let's give it to 'em, right now!":
You know the pain that's in my heart
It just shows I'm not very smart
Who needs love, when you got a gun?
Who needs love, to have any fun?
But the most audacious punk-derived "Louie" came from
punk's first high priest, Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm Mc-
Laren, an anarchist poseur and dance-beat colonialist. McLaren
did it with a group led by a 14-year-old Anglo-Asian girl, An-
nabella. Bow Wow Wow's 1982 single "Louis Quatorze" cli-
maxed a short but spectacularly hyped career that supposedly
incarnated the fixation of post-modern adolescents on "tribal-
ism," by which McLaren might have meant the awareness of the
global village induced by satellite and electronics technology, if
he hadn't abandoned each of his theories on the verge of coher-
ence. In any event, using McLaren's ideas, Bow Wow Wow suc-
cessfully fell short of stardom.
Still, "Louis Quatorze" is not only the most interesting
"Louie" uttered by a punk fixture, but the most fascinating out-
rage of McLaren's post-Pistols career. His post-punk-pop expro-
priations of hip-hop, old -timey Kentucky fiddling, South Mrican
dance music, and opera themes were all superseded by better
efforts in the same genres, but in "Louis Quatorze" McLaren
crafted a mini-scandal-the record's lyric portrayed bold En-
glish Louie raping underage Annabella, while the single's sleeve
depicted her topless in a seriocomic ripoff of Manet-and a
memorable extension of "Louie," since what Annabella shouts
during the portion of the record when she is purportedly being
rogered by the swain Quatorze is "Louie-Louie-Louie."
Bow Wow Wow thereafter reached a total dead end, although
McLaren did assay the group's rescue by implanting a new lead
singer-the gorgeous semi-transvestite Boy George, well before
the advent of Culture Club. Unfortunately, even this merger did
not sound so much ahead of its time as confounding of the pre-
cise period in which one heard it.
168 LOUIE LOUiE
* * *
Disco also produced no significant "Louie"s and the reasons
were also rhythmic. But the disco scene did produce Richard
Berry's all-time favorite "Louie": The version by Barry "White,
who took the song from pure rock'n'roll to pure moan'n' groan.
"White, then a couple years past the peak of his popularity (which
stemmed from such Top 10 orgasmic orchestral grunts as "I'm
Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby," "Never Never Gonna
Give You Up," "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Baby," "You're
the First, the Last, My Everything" and "It's Ecstasy "When You
Lay Down Next to Me" - and you wonder why some folks hated
disco!) even cut his "Louie" in half (the length! the length!) and
put it out as a single. He even performed it on "Soul Train."
Richard Berry loved it because White's version finally
brought to life his original vision of "all the timbales and the
congas going, and me singing 'Louie Louie,' "which Max Feir-
tag had nixed in favor of "a good, R&B-sounding record."
"Barry "White did it exactly the way I wanted to do it," Berry
enthused. "I mean, he had [sings] dah-dah, d-d-d-dah. It was
13 minutes, too. I loved it. It was on his last good album-the
Beware album. 'Cause he did Jesse Belvin's 'Beware' and he did
'Louie Louie.' He almost had a hit going with it, 'cause I think
it was on Billboard, #77 with a bullet. They stopped promoting
it, said, 'Well, "Louie Louie" will make it on its own' and, of
course, they lost the record."
Berry got the details wrong-White's "Louie" workout
wasn't thirteen minutes long, just 7: 14, with the single edited
down to 3:35. And it didn't chart. But Richard got the spirit right:
In "White's arrangement "Louie Louie" emerges as an up-tempo
Latin groove, driven by timbales and congas and punctuated by
brilliant trumpet riffs, while "White supplements the chorus with
the plaintive interpolation, "Comin' home, Jamaaaica!"
White's "Louie" reveals an intimate familiarity with every
bit of the phrasing from the original version-it's an extension
and White keeps a respectful distance. Anybody familiar with
Berry's vocal style will notice what should already have been ap-
parent, if history was fair: White's vocal style owed a huge debt
to Richard Berry's. Indeed, "White succeeded Richard as the bass
169
voice of choice among early sixties L.A. studio rats. His hom-
age-no matter late, it came,-was intentional and sincere.
After White's "Louie Louie" came out he tracked Berry
down. "When I sat down and talked with him he said, 'Man, I
used to see you ridin' down the street and I said, 'One of these
days I'm gonna sing just like Richard Berry,' " Richard remem-
bered. "And he said he used to stop me and I used to say, 'Yeah,
man, just keep goin'.' But I don't remember none of this." Berry
chuckled. "Even when he was on 'Soul Train' he said, "I'm
gonna do this song that this black guy wrote. Everybody thinks
that these white guys recorded it, but a black guy did this.' I
mean he went through the whole thing on 'Soul Train,' which is
great. Even on the liner notes on the album he did it.
"So when he did 'Louie Louie' he was lookin' for me, 'cause
he wanted me to hear it. And he sent all kinda people out lookin'
for me. He had a pretty nice taste of bread, he had more money
than I ever had when I was comin' up. I guess he was paying
homage or whatever you call it. Later on I called it bullshit. He
started saying, well, come out to the house and I'm gonna get all
the old artists and I'm gonna record 'em and bama bam." But
when Berry finally arrived, White only suggested they write
songs together, to which Richard -who right about then was
busted flat-replied, "Man, get outta here."
Mainly, "Louie Louie" survived in white rock as a goof. Bruce
Springsteen did his onstage at Notre Dame as a genuflection to
frat rock, former New York Doll Johnny Thunders bumbled
through his somewhere in the wilds of Europe. Politicians from
Thurston County, Washington-Commissioner George Barnes
and the Original Trendsetters to disgraced former-San-Diego-
Mayor-turned-radio-host Roger Hedgecock of the Arnold-
Hedgecock Experience fluffed their way through vanity label
renditions, while Paul Shaffer, David Letterman's answer to Doc
Severinson, actually received a major label release for a treat-
ment that belonged in a Holiday Inn lounge. Former Velvet Un-
derground drummer Maureen Tucker cut hers with Texas hip-
sters (on an album called Playing Possum on the termitous Trash
Records). Members of such "progressive rock" groups as Hat-
field and the North, Pavlov's Dog, and even the punko-metalloid
170 LOUIE LOUiE
Stranglers also committed "Louie"s, though all of them used
pseudonyms.
Few eighties versions of "Louie" received the imaginative
adaptation provided by jazz-rock fusioneers Stanley Clarke and
George Duke in 1981. Clarke and Duke gave it to their audience
right then as a fable. "Come on over here, little brother, and sit
down on your daddy's knee," Duke begins, "and let me tell you
a story about your Uncle Stanley and me. Once a long time ago,
we was lost at sea, sailors of love in distress- I tell this tale to
thee." They proceeded to do a straightforward exposition of your
basic duh duh duh. duh duh. "So the moral of this story is,"
Duke concluded a little over five minutes later, "if you sail the
seven seas / Take your women with you and set your mind at
ease. "
A good joke, but nowhere near the best. That came in 1988
from a rap group called the Fat Boys. The trio (Mark "Prince
Markie Dee" Morales, Damon "The Human Beat Box" Wim-
bley, and Damon "Kool Rock-ski" Robinson) were so plump
they made Barry White look as pipestem as Whitney Houston.
They'd been making records since "Jailhouse Rap," an hys-
terical 1984 account of getting sent up the river for busting into
a pizza joint with a bad dose of the hungries. By the fall of 1988,
they'd exhausted the most obvious fat-boy jokes and began re-
cycling rock'n'roll standards, first taking a shot with a weenie
remake of "The Twist," accompanied by the Beach Boys, a
group by then on or over the borderline of pop senility, but nev-
ertheless white enough to help them garner some pop airplay.
Then they made their move to "Give it to 'em, right now."
The Fat Boys were the most elephantine termites ever put on
public display, but they performed "Louie Louie" like men born
for the task. Their producers, the Latin Rascals, retooled the
music with scratching, shrieks, and raw guitar counterpointed
with chiming synth, reinforcing and extending the basic duh duh
duh. duh duh with drumming so powerfully electronic it feels
real. Because hip-hop (the name for the sound and culture that
developed around rappers) provided a home to all manner of
gangstas, reformed and unreformed, converting "Louie" to that
style brought the tune up to date as rebel rock.
The Fat Boys (together with Jim "Jimbo" Glenn) did an even
171
better job of updating the "Louie" lyric with an eye toward cur-
rent events, which included the late Eighties' witch-hunt for
dirty lyrics in rap. Their rap chronicles a pursuit of the song's
real words that's sparked by Mark's mother's reminiscence of
her youth, when "Louie" caused "A big ass rumble / They
thought it was filthy because the words were mumbled." Moms
lets the boys in on how it was with "Louie" back in the day:
Down at my mom's school, it was all they talked about
It was about gettin' busy and they had no doubt
It was un-precedent-ed, what they said on that platter
At this point Moms turns on an oldies station, and for the
first time the rappers experience the wonders of "Louie" - but
they can't understand the words. So off they quest, determined
to discover their new favorite's deep Secret. Eventually, they run
into The Great Bunfy (whoever he may be) and "he knew every
word." Indeed, he tells them, it's the rap of his dreams, even
though his interpretation boils down to "Say what?"
The greatest exposition of the Fat Boys' updated "Louie
Louie" comes in the music video directed by Scott Kalvert. Es-
sentially, Kalvert plays the song as a parody of Animal House: It
opens with a nerdy dean declaring, "I want that fat-ternity
closed down" and follows through with a party scene (at the FAT
frat) that makes the one in Animal House look like a Junior
League prom. This video is literally one long food fight, com-
plete with dancing girls, water balloons, exploding plumbing,
and refrigerators that whirlwind chow into the Fat Boys' mouths.
In terms of sheer anarchic energy, Belushi and company
didn't even come close. But still-sometimes you make history;
sometimes history makes you. The Fat Boys entered pop-chart
annals for that wimpy remake of "The Twist," which got lots of
airplay thanks to their bondage to the Beach Boys. "Louie
Louie" got very little exposure, even on MTV. Yet to true believ-
ers in the science of "givin' it to 'em, right now," the Fat Boys'
"Louie" remains the last great "Louie Louie" to date.
13
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196q
Richard Berry had been playing in this dreary lounge since 9 PM,
but even at midnight his night's sentence had another six or
eight hours to run.
Dives like this were the prime venues for Berry's music, now
that the old Los Angeles studio R&B scene had died out, its vin-
tage harmonizers replaced by Anglofied rockers and Motown-
happy soulsters. After Richard split Flip he spent years bouncing
from label to label-tiny outfits like Paxley, Hasil, K&G, AMC,
Bold Soul, PAM, and Smash. The closest he came to a hit was
writing "Moments to Remember" by Jennell Hawkins, his old
duet partner, in 1961-her record nudged up to #50 on the pop
chart.
Dorothy Berry now had the family's more successful career;
172
173
she made "The Girl Who Stopped the Duke of Earl" and "Ain't
That Love," both produced by H. B. Barnum, and from the mid-
sixties through the end of the decade, she toured with Ray
Charles as a Raelette. Ten years after Richard sold his song to
buy a ring, the couple (who'd had two children - a boy and a girl)
split up. Berry later had three daughters with a woman he never
married, although he always financially supported their off-
spring, and then remarried for four years, which brought him a
fifth daughter, Christie.
With so many mouths to feed and his studio work dried up,
Richard retreated to the half-lit world of after-hours sessions. A
subterranean circuit of them existed, and he worked it, still play-
ing off that old Jesse Belvin principle: grab the cash, fast.
Berry called the shows he did after midnight until the wee,
wee hours and on into midmorning "jam sessions," but he didn't
mean the kind of free-blowing gig where any kind of song or
approach could be attempted. The club owners made certain of
that. They wanted Top 40 material, convinced that anything
newfangled would send the clientele elsewhere. Whether they
were right or wrong, Richard was stuck playing the hits of the
day. Richard squeezed in a few of his own tunes, but at the price
of cutting into his tips from playing requests.
About the only song of his own these clubs regularly permit-
ted Richard was the one that went duh duh duh. duh duh. Berry
could have been excused for being sick of that one.
In the late autumn of 1963, "somebody told me, 'Some white
guys, man, they destroyed your song.' And when I heard it ... it
was strange. Because I had heard so much about it, I didn't know
what to expect when I heard it. I wasn't insulted. It was just
strange ... "
Berry did feel embarrassed and angry. "I was flattered when
it became a hit, but then I got bitter about it. Here I was, the
writer, but all those millions of dollars went into somebody else's
pockets," he told Steve Propes. "If I had thought very much
about it, I probably would have gone crazy or killed somebody."
It wasn't that the Feirtags had cheated him-he knew that
the deal was just business as usual. "But then people started
askin', 'Well, man, you gonna start gettin' money, now, ain't cha?
Where's your hog?' That's what they called a Cadillac in those
17ct LOUIE LOUiE
days. How am 1 gonna tell these people, 'Well, 1 done sold the
song for seven hundred dollars'? But before this, seven hundred
and fifty bucks was a latta money."
That's how things stood on that midweek midnight at the
Carolina Lanes when three white guys, fresh off the Strip and
far too slick for this room, walked in and took a table near the
stage. At the next break the oldest of them introduced himself as
Roger Hart, manager of Paul Revere and the Raiders. The other
two, he explained, were the Raiders' lead singer, Mark Lindsay,
and its lead guitarist, Drake Levin. "They'd like to see if you
have any more original material that we could do," he said.
Richard just did the regular Top 40 set he was being paid to
do, which was, as Levin recalled it, worth the trip by itself: "It
was so funky and so soulful, 1 thought this guy was like another
Ray Charles." But Berry didn't- because he couldn't-play orig-
inal songs.
Hart remembered that, afterward, Berry "got into either the
piano bench or a briefcase," and dug out 'Have Love, Will
Travel.' " But Levin remembers Richard as being very "unap-
preciative" of the inquiry. So Levin says, "Mark went home and
wrote his own follow-up, 'Louie, Go Home.' "From which Rich-
ard Berry earned precisely nothing, though he did get a small
slice ofthe B side, which was "Have Love, Will Travel."
Richard Berry played the afterhours circuit for 20 years, from
1960 to 1980. And even there he became a kind oflegend, start-
ing at the Casino Club in Gardena: "They catered to the little
Vegas acts, the lounge acts that came out of Vegas."
"When 1 started working in that club [the Casino], 1 was
making like twelve bucks a morning, and when 1 left there, he
was paying me like four thousand a week," Richard remem-
bered. "I made him go union and everything. But 1 stayed there
for four and a half years, until my price started rising so high
and he said, 'Well, 1 can't give you any more money.' "
About that time H. D. Hover, one-time manager of Sammy
Davis, Jr., and a former owner of Ciro's, a comparatively swank
club up on Sunset Strip, ("They called him The Last of the Big-
Time Spenders," said Richard) came into the Casino to make
Richard an offer.
175
"Man, I like your band," said Hover in his muted rasp. "It
wouldn't go over in my place, because I've got a younger clien-
tele. But I tell you what-you come out and play Monday night
and I'll pay you for the audition, and we'll see what happens."
"Shit, I went out to that place on Monday night," Berry re-
membered in 1990, "and there was standing room only. 'Cause
ofthe word-of-mouth thing. I got all the youngsters in there. By
the time I finished that night, he had a contract ready for me to
sign."
Richard regretted only one thing about the move: "I found
out that my older clientele wouldn't come to the Century with
the youngsters. They just didn't like 'em, you know," he said.
"But every time I gained it was better for me. 'Cause from 1960
up until 1980, I did nothing but night clubs. All around the
Southern California area-from San Fernando Valley to Orange
County to San Gabriel- I mean, I just had the circuit sewed up."
Though Richard Berry's name was lost to the big-league rec-
ord business, he at least managed to document his typical live
show on LP: Wild Berry! Live From H. D. Hover's Century Res-
taurant by Richard Berry and the Soul Serchers [sic], cut for
PAM Records during a 1969 stint.
"When I first recorded that, we were makin' so much money
we had a bank account. No musicians have bank accounts! We
had about six grand in the bank from the tips that we'd get. I'd
make anywhere from three to four hundred bucks a week in
tips-just from doing requests."
Out of that savings account, Berry hired portable recording
equipment. Wild Berry! featured three original songs ("Wild
Berry," "Down Here on the Ground," "Spread Your Love") and
Jimmy Ruffin's Motown hit, "Give Her All the Love I've Got."
The Soul Serchers consisted of saxophonists Billy Collins and
Carson Oliver, Willie Briggs on bass, drummer Gary Hensen,
two conga players and backup vocalists Dorothy Durr, Julia Till-
man, Maxine Willard, plus Richard himself on lead vocals and
electric piano.
The album's new songs aren't much more than variations on
the soul styles of more famous singers ("Down Here on the
Ground," the best of them, is Chuck Jackson in both phrasing
and dramaturgy). Berry's voice remains distinctive, but he's
176 LOUIE LOUiE
clearly a singer caught between eras, too late for R&B, too soon
for Barry White-style lugubrious love moans. The band reeks
funk on the breaks, but it's mainly trapped in lounge arrange-
ments whose prime purpose is not to offend. Richard performs
in the guise of a man with a past, calling off the names of old
haunts ("One time for Long Beach! One time for the El Rey
Club! One time for the Raintree"), but it's hard to discern a pal-
pable present.
Wild Berry couldn't jump-start Richard's career, but the al-
bum undeniably served its more Belvinesque purpose; Berry sold
every one of the 7,000 albums he pressed, at ten bucks apiece.
In the mid-seventies it got a lot more complicated. Richard
and his second wife split up and he kept custody of his youngest
child, Christie. "It was an interracial marriage and she [the
mother] said, 'Well, she's not gonna be able to survive in my
world.' I think she did it because she thought maybe I'd be a
complete asshole and put the kid in a foster home.
"My whole lifestyle had to change because I had to get up in
the morning, take her to school, pick her up at 12 noon. And I'm
singin' at night, and tryin' to have a girlfriend, and stay over at
my girlfriend's house, then I had to get up at 6:30 in the morn-
ing-cause I didn't want my mom to do it-come across town,
take my daughter to school, come back and get in bed and sleep,
and then get up at noon and pick her up.
"But I think that was the most sufficient, meaning[ful] time.
Because I was in what you call a [quandary], you know. Like I
said, 'What am I gonna do with this kid?' I had to be responsible.
I didn't want my mom to have to raise her, while I'm out diddlin'
around, hangin' out, layin' up with some broad or somethin'.
"Most days, you know, the kid had to get up and go to school.
And I was always the type that didn't want my kid to walk to
school until I figured that she was old enough. 'Cause you know,
you gotta watch kids.
"But I mean I was determined. I walked her until she said,
"Well, I don't want you to walk to school with me no more. I
want to walk to school by myself.' I said, 'Okay, man, you know.'
And even when she started out, I followed her. It took me a while
to let go. Then I says, 'Okay, the broad can make it on her own.' "
* * *
177
As Richard Berry found his life engulfed by his daughter, he lost
track of his other great creation. Estranged from pop radio and
from the rock scene that grew up in the wake of the Beatles, and
with a relatively minute stake in the issue, he missed the sixties'
"Louie Louie" boom, failed to notice as his greatest hit became
one of the most recorded songs of all time.
The original Richard Berry and the Pharoahs' "Louie" dis-
appeared into the maw of bargain bins and collectors' obses-
sions. Flip licensed its masters to Era, which specialized in reis-
suing old 45s, and briefly put it out with "Rock, Rock, Rock" on
the flip side. Richard wasn't even aware of that single's exis-
tence.
Also, unbeknownst to Richard Berry, the Kingsmen enjoyed
an entire Top 40 career, spinning off from their "dirty" "Louie."
According to Dick Peterson (the Kingsmen's third and longest-
tenured drummer) the band learned from a reporter that "Louie
Louie" had been banned in Indiana while recording a follow-up
in a Seattle studio in the spring of 1964. Perhaps. Peterson also
claimed in a 1986 interview in the San Jose Mercury News that
the band "went to federal court over it, and the judge wanted to
hear the record. He listened and all he could do was laugh. He
said he couldn't understand one word of it; he didn't know how
they got dirty or even clean lyrics out of it." This conflates the
FBI and FCC investigations with the results of the Ely lawsuit;
no such courtroom adjudication of the record's quality or ob-
scenity ever took place, or it would be written large in the annals
of the First Amendment such a case would violate six ways to
Sunday.
The Kingsmen's later interviews are checkered with such
apocrypha. Most of it can be written off to the entertainer's in-
stinct to make a good story better. Sift enough old interviews,
though, and suspension of disbelief grows ever more unwilling.
Certainly, one would like to believe that "when we would do
our concerts people would be watching us and getting into the
music, but when it came time for 'Louie Louie,' we lost their
eyes to a piece of paper they had wadded up in their wallet. They
would open it up and try to read along with the lyrics. So all we
would see were tops of heads looking down at their lyrics. After
these shows you would see some of these versions. These sweet-
178 LOUIE LOUiE
looking little, young girls would come up and say, 'Are these the
real words of "Louie Louie"?' There would be some pretty dirty
stuff on these papers."* But who knows how close it conforms to
reality?
Closer, perhaps, than some other yarns. According to Mike
Mitchell,** the group's fourth single recycled Flip's other R&B
hit, Donald Wood's "Death of an Angel," and it was also banned
in some places "because kids were jumping off bridges and
blaming us." Low bridges, presumably.
The Kingsmen ran into real trouble in 1965, when another
Top 10 record, "The Jolly Green Giant," knocked off the Green
Giant TV commercials for canned and frozen vegetables ("In the
val-ley of the Jolly / Ho! ho! ho! / Green Giant"). The Kingsmen
weren't the first to base a hit on a commercial jingle-the Mon-
otones' noble "Book of Love" took its melody from Pepsodent's
"You'll wonder where the yellow went ... " in 1958, and an Alka-
Seltzer ad became the T -Bones' "No Matter What Shape Your
Stomach's In," also in 1965-but they definitely set the record
for getting in the biggest jam over it.
"In those days we had no control over recording. Not over the
quality ... nothing," an unidentified Kingsman told Shannon
and Javna. "We were just high schoolers that had a band ... and
they'd say, 'Go into the studio and record whatever you know.'
And we'd record everything that we played live, and then pretty
soon it would show up on records.
"We knew this song, 'Big Boy Pete,' which we did live all the
time." [It originated as a badman ballad by one ofthe great L.A.
doo-wop groups, the Olympics.] "So as a joke, because we al-
ways recorded everything we played, we wrote these lyrics up for
the Jolly Green Giant version. Then we went into the studio on
one of our jaunts, recording 800 songs ... thinking that the
record company was going to say, 'What in the hell is this bull-
crap?' 'The Jolly Green Giant' was like our revenge."
But before the Kingsmen knew anything about it, Wand re-
leased the song. Because the parody was so strong and the "Big
Boy Pete" melody so compelling, the song hit fast and big. But
*From Allan Vorda's interview in the April, 1990 DISCoveries magazine.
**In the same Vorda interview.
179
they'd neglected to obtain rights to the Green Giant from Libby,
the corporate monolith that had the big guy trademarked.
"The West Coast office realized they had this [great promo-
tion]," according to the Kingsman. "They used to send us boxes
of peas and carrots, tomatoes and stuff to give away at our con-
certs. At one point they sent this Jolly Green Giant that must've
been about ten feet tall to stand on the stage next to us."
But the corporate headquarters-types back East didn't find
the record (which depicted the Giant as a guy in dire need of a
woman who could accommodate him) amusing at all. The next
thing the Kingsmen knew, their second-biggest hit was also in
danger of being banned. Twenty years later corporations often
used rock performers - including the Kingsmen - as commercial
pitchmen. But in 1965, rock'n'roll was disreputable. Libby ac-
cused the Kingsmen of "defamation of their company image."
Although the record wasn't pulled, the controversy made an em-
barrassing splash in the press. Which helped sales-of records,
if not broccoli.
By 1967 Lynn Easton decided to ditch the rock'n'roll one-
nighter circuit for a Vegas-style club act. But the other band
members resisted, and this time it was Lynn who left the fold.
He returned to Portland and took a job in the advertising busi-
ness. (In the eighties Easton developed a lecture presentation on
the saga of "Louie Louie.")
The Kingsmen continued for about six more months before
folding for the duration of the decade. A Seventies comeback
attempt by a group that included Peterson, Barry Curtis, and one
original member, Mike Mitchell, went nowhere; the same band
also played the oldies circuit in the Eighties.
Of the other Kingsmen, only keyboardist Don Gallucci and
latter-day bassist Norm Sundholm stayed in the music world.
Gallucci formed Don and the Goodtimes, who appeared regu-
larly on TV's "Where the Action Is" alongside the show's house
band, Paul Revere and the Raiders, then put together a group
called Touch and when that folded, became an Elektra Records
A&R man, where he produced Iggy and the Stooges several
years before Metallic KG.
Sundholm stayed in the Northwest and, with the assistance
180
LOUIE LoUIE
of his brother, formed the Sunn Instrument Company, one of the
first firms to market large, loud rock'n'roll-oriented amplifiers.
Jack Ely never regained his momentum after his return from
the military and the death of Bert Berns; he did re-enter music,
scoring industrial training movies ("Now this is how we work the
drill press") for a Portland firm. By the early Nineties, though,
Jack had licked chemical dependency, started a new family, and
begun playing on the oldies circuit and demoing new music.
In 1980 Richard Berry burned out on the after-hours life. The
night clubs killed his enthusiasm by demanding no original ma-
terial at all, which Richard considered "a prostitution-type
thing." Besides, he'd become too old for such dives. "I kept vi-
sualizing myself falling dead playing a B-flat chord and telling
my horn player, 'Don't let me die in this dirty place. Drag me
outside where the moon or the sun can shine on me. Just don't
let me die in here.' We're -doing drugs to go to bed, we're doing
drugs to get up, I'm doing five nights a week of two jam sessions.
"And something started happening to me spiritually, too.
'Cause you know, I wasn't going to church, I had been out of
church. But something started happening, like something was
saying to me, 'You need more than this.' You know, it just kept
happening to me. And in 1980 I went back to church [his neigh-
borhood Cornerstone Baptist, where he'd been baptized in
1943]. You know, I don't go around saying, 'I'm a born-again.
Glory hallelujah, look what the Lord's done for me.' But that
was the time when everything started to change for the positive
for me."
Quitting the after-hours circuit may have been a necessity,
but alternative job opportunities didn't quickly present them-
selves. Berry's only remaining music income came biannually
from BM!. That's what saved me between starvation and a foot
in the grave sometime." But the BMI income didn't amount to
much - a few hundred bucks one period, a few thousand if
something extraordinary took place.
In 1987 Berry found himself on the welfare line, receiving
$240 a month in state aid. "When I got a couple little gigs on
the side, it would just supplement the money that I was getting
offa welfare. 'Cause if I hadda been totally dependent on wel-
181
fare-nobody can live off that. And the thing is, what they say
about it is true. It's really fucking degrading, man. They give you
just enough but not enough. I mean, the check you get from the
first to the fifteenth is great, but waiting for that check from the
fifteenth to the first is a long ass time, you know.
"And you get in that position where you says, well, I should
go out here and get a job. But I don't know how to do nothin'
else, I'm a musician, and I got a handicap-you start making
excuses. And then you start sittin' up there, lookin' at soap op-
eras all day. And then pretty soon you become a hermit. I was
like a hermit in this bedroom, you know."
Idle and bored, Richard responded to a radio ad offering job
training. "I figured that somebody would hire me and pay me to
learn on the job. But when I got down here, this was a school,
you know. I didn't want to go to no fuckin' school. So I come
home with the papers they gave me and everything, and talked
to my daughter. I said, 'Well, they want me to go to school, it's
not really a job. You know, I'm the oldest dude in the school.' "
With Christie's encouragement, Berry accepted the deal; the
school arranged a loan and in the summer of 1982 Richard went
back to school "to learn to program. Now I had to learn how to
type. I always wondered how come the typewriter didn't say
'ABCD, EFG.' So I went through this course and I learned how
to type, I think, about 45 words a minute. But I got a job. Not
computer programming, but I got a job working the keypunch
machine, and I was doin' payrolls at this place and everything. I
had a job. My first check, I said, 'Hey man! I made a hundred
and fifty dollars!' "
But in the spring of 1984, Berry's luck failed again. His
neighbor's pit bulls, one of the great media monsters of the
Eighties-but, in this case, all too real in their viciousness-got
loose from behind a fence and attacked him. As Berry tried to
shove the gate closed, one dog jumped up to bite at his hand.
Richard fell back against his car. The fall pinched the discs in
his lower spine.
"I was laid up close to 45 days. And I lost the job. I was just
gettin' off of welfare at that time. So I went to this doctor who's
the head spine specialist at the orthopedic hospital."
182 LOUIE LOUiE
"I can't afford to be laid up," Berry told the doctor. "I got a
job, working computers."
"Well, you won't be able to do that anymore," the doctor
replied. "You won't be able to sit that long."
"Oh man," groaned the Columbus of duh duh duh. duh duh.
"I took this course and you mean to tell me I can't do the work
anymore?"
"What were you doing before you got into computers?" the
doctor asked. "You don't look like an old guy but you're pretty
up there. C'mon, you must have done something."
"Well, I was an entertainer."
"You were an entertainer, you could entertain. You gave that
up? To do computer work? What kind of entertainer?"
"Well, I was a songwriter and I wrote songs and I recorded."
"Have I heard any of your songs?" asked the doc.
"Well, I wrote this song, 'Louie Louie.' "
"Well, he was one of those baby-boomers," Berry remem-
bered. "He said, [in a growing growl of excitement] 'You wrote
"Louie Louie"? And you quit peiforming? And went to comput-
ers?' He made me feel good; he made me feel good enough to
feel like, well, maybe I do have a career in this business after all.
He told me, 'Well, Mr. Berry, I would advise you to go back to
entertaining. '
"And that's when I did. My daughter was takin' me to the
job. I was walking up on stage with a cane and I'd sit on the
amplifier and sing, 'til my back got better. And after that, like I
said, things started to move."
Richard Berry picked the most ironic time to leave music. The
early eighties witnessed a steady revival of "Louie"mania. The
key year proved to be 1 981, when a college deej ay' s gaze became
fixated upon "Louie" in the middle of a very long night.
Jeff Riedle-"Stretch" as the six-foot-five-inch student dee-
jay was known-worked the graveyard shift at KFJC (89.7 FM),
the station licensed to Foothill Community College, a two-year
school in Los Altos Hills in the midst of California's Silicon Val-
ley, just north of San Jose. Students ran KEJC under the nominal
guidance of "station supervisor" "Doc" Pelzel, a man possessed
by a vision of radio as an artistic communications medium, a
183
vision perpetually frustrated by the dictates of advertising-driven
broadcasting. Pelzel trained radio guerillas and Stretch took his
credentials cum laude.
One night in the summer of 1981, when he figured his au-
dience amounted to hardly anyone, Stretch began musing about
the most recorded rock'n'roll song of all time. The way things
were going in commercial radio, he figured the industry would
narrow everything down to one song soon, and he might as well
get the jump. So he went through the station's massive LP col-
lection and located every "Louie Louie" he could find. There
were thirty-three. On his next shift he proceeded to air them,
one after the other: If you don't count Woo Woo Ginsburg's dou-
ble-play on his "Worst Record of the Week," this was the first
broadcast "Louie Louie" marathon. It lasted about an hour and
a half.
Why did Riedle select "Louie"? For the usual reasons.
"When I was looking for songs, I found about 15 versions of
'Hey Joe' and 'Satisfaction' and 'Pipeline,' "he told the San Jose
Mercury News. "I've heard that there are over 1,000 versions of
'Yesterday,' but I would think that a lot of those are schmaltzy
Muzak versions. Besides, 'Yesterday' just wouldn't be the same."
Even while the special aired, listeners called up with tips on
where to find more "Louie"s. And about the same time, KALX-
FM-the University of California at Berkeley's campus station-
surveyed its listeners to determine their favorite all time rock
song. "Louie Louie" won. Mel Cheplowitz, a!k/a The Amazing
Mystery Deejay, took up the challenge. He took KFJC's list, dug
up an additional seventeen "Louie"s and aired fifty in a row in
December 1981. In midsummer 1982 Riedle stretched the rec-
ord to eighty-eight renditions, and the following December,
Cheplowitz broadcast an awesome "Lou-A-Thon" of twelve
hours, featuring two hundred consecutive variations on "Let's
give it to 'em, right now!"
Cheplowitz said he was quitting. KFJC escalated anyway.
"We started this thing and we intend to end it," Riedle told the
San Francisco Examiner.
Riedle, Pelzel, and KFJC air personality Phil Dirt (Frank
Luft) decided to assemble a full-scale, all-out assault: "Maxi-
mum 'Louie Louie.' "They would go on the air on Friday, Au-
I SCi LOUIE LOUiE
gust 19, 1983, at six in the evening, and stay on the air with an
all-"Louie Louie" format until they had broadcast every version
of the song in existence-known, unknown, celebrated, disrep-
utable, professional, amateur, long, short, reggae, classical (as
"Ludwig Ludwig"), heavy metal, jazz, country and western,
marching band, Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian. They would
air "Louie" in a 35-minute disco version (by the Disco Twits, a
group whose leader was one Jeffrey Riedle), reshaped by 40-plus
minutes of Hell's Angel grunts, and ramcharged in 55 seconds
by the Patti Smith Group. They'd feature "Louie" as played on
a home computer and with kitchen utensils, with door chimes,
and on a touchtone phone's keypad. KFJC would air "Louie"s
sent from Holland, France, Italy, EI Salvador, Mexico, and Ja-
pan. Not only would the station broadcast special "Louie"s
made by established recording acts like the Chambers Brothers,
Jonathan Richman, David Peel, Randy Hansen, and the Beau
Brummels; rediscover versions rendered by such "pro" talent as
comedian Buddy Hackett and actor David McCallum (the latter
blessedly instrumental, the former torturously not) and by semi-
fictitious artists like the Bowl of Slugs, the Bloodclots, and Deb-
bie and the Panty Lines, but every two hours it would take a
break from the recordings and broadcast "Louie" live as per-
formed by local bands. KFJC would fly Jack Ely down from Or-
egon, drag Richard Berry up from L.A. by train, and air a
ninety-minute "Louie Louie" featuring the pair's first-ever per-
sonal or musical encounter. They'd even play the Kingsmen's
hit. But no "Louie," not even the Kingsmen's, would they re-
peat.
With its 250-watt signal, KFJC could be heard all over the
Bay Area, a hotbed of professional, semi-professional, and up-
start garage- and living room-bands. Because they'd be accept-
ing-indeed, soliciting-submissions from the audience as the
marathon went on, the programmers had absolutely no idea how
many "Louie"s they'd air: The Examiner headline promised
four hundred.
But as the weekend wore on, it was as if some sort of inverse
cargo cult had developed-or, to be precise, as if a modern pot-
latch ceremony had spontaneously begun. People who had no
plans to ever make a tape of anything, let alone a song with "two
185
notes and three chords" (as Pelzel described it), cooked up ar-
rangements and drove-sometimes many miles-to KFJC to
hand their cassettes over, often without quite knowing why. One
woman showed up with a homemade rendition, the Wall Street
Journal reported, and when a staffer praised her courage
("Three chords and no talent is all you need" was the slogan
going over the air), explained that the tape had been made by
her mother, who stayed out in the car.
On Sunday morning Pelzel and Riedle aired a call for no
more new "Louie"s, on the grounds-said Doc-that "we could
be playing 'Louie Louie' 'til next August if we're not careful."
KFJC staffers crashed on couches, posted messages of impend-
ing doom on the office bulletin boards ("All this Louie is making
me itch"), wandered hallways in search of respite or at least caf-
feine. They were drained; they'd given all their spirits possessed.
The potlatch was complete.
Yet the station had committed to airing everything submitted,
and it wasn't until Monday morning that "Maximum 'Louie
Louie' " reached its blessed conclusion. An astonishing eight
hundred variations on Richard Berry's cosmic termite trash
spilled out into the ether over Silicon Valley. Listeners to 89.7
FM had heard sixty-three consecutive hours of duh duh duh. duh
duh. And there were people who wondered why the "Maximum
'Louie Louie' " logo was the song title, encircled and with a red
slash across it, the universal symbol for "no more 'Louie
Louie.' " As Doc Pelzel said, "After you've listened to five to ten
hours of 'Louie Louie,' it's a very appropriate symbol." After
programming sixty-three hours' worth, it must have constituted
a prayer.
But when Pelzel was asked if his crew hadn't gotten sick of
it all, he said, "Not at all. It's just like the way you feel when you
get off one of the thrill rides at an amusement park. You want to
rest for a while."
As befit an educational institution with a community service
mandate, KFJC treated "Maximum 'Louie Louie' " as a lesson
in radio marketing. Thus, the program had been thoroughly
scheduled, rampantly promoted, and used not only as a satire of
186 LOUIE LOUiE
the commercial radio process but as a projection of termite sub-
verSIOn.
For a time Pelzel and company actually tried to market
"Maximum 'Louie Louie' "to other broadcasters as a weekend-
long stunt that could galvanize local listenership. But the idea
couldn't be sold because it was too easily poached-an appro-
priate penalty, perhaps, for trying to merchandise potlatch. Well
into the Nineties, stations around the United States (KROX, Dal-
las, Texas; WNOR, Norfolk, Virginia; WRQN, Toledo, Ohio)
would institute all- "Louie Louie" formats. Usually these lasted
briefly on an outlet about to change formats - say, from album-
rock to country, or oldies to Top 40. The "Louie" marathon be-
came a device by which programmers drove old fans away. Pre-
sumably, any new listeners attracted by the all- "Louie" broad-
cast would be swiftly alienated by whatever followed - or so
programmers must have hoped, because who the hell could sell
ads to an audience composed of beings who sat around going
"duh duh duh. duh duh" all the time?
Yet there was a substantial "Louie" constituency. Stretch
Riedle had reinitiated a national obsession, though by now a lot
more people were in on the joke. In 1984, when Bill Taylor of
WTMA, Charleston, South Carolina, offered to send listeners a
list of all the four-letter words in "Louie Louie," WTMA was
flooded with self-addressed envelopes. The list included "ship,"
"girl," and "fine." KFJC tapped into the all-"Louie Louie"
market most successfully by convincing Rhino Records, a Los
Angeles label that specialized in rock reissues, to put together its
Best of Louie, Louie compilation to coincide with "Maximum
'Louie Louie'." Only ten tracks long, the anthology omitted
many of the most interesting versions of "Louie"s in favor of
novelties. But it featured the Wailers, the Kingsmen, the Sonics,
and the Berry remake, plus speed-punk and marching band ren-
ditions. Drum majorettes rocked, record collectors quaked, and
at least one deejay rubbed his hands in glee.
On March 21, 1985, John DeBella-the top-rated morning-
show host at Philadelphia's rock-oriented WMMR-FM-took a
copy of The Best of Louie Louie out of the station library. DeBella
regaled his audience with an account of the "Louie" marathon
187
and the bizarre history of the song. Meantime, he was "needle-
dropping the album" -that is, playing bits from various tracks,
without letting them play all the way through.
"I started to imagine the other versions of the song we should
have: The Mayor's version. Billy Graham's version. Making up
an explanation of what Richard Berry had done. I was just wing-
ing it," DeBella said. "I started about 9::20 and about 9:40 I went
to another record, and then I came back on and said, 'Wouldn't
it be funny if we had a parade where the only song people played
would be "Louie Louie"?' And I asked listeners to write letters
about what they'd do in that kind of parade. That was Thursday
and I was off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In the mail on my
desk that following Monday, there were eighty responses. Eighty
responses from one mention!"
"John walked into my office after his shift that Monday and
out of the blue asked me, 'How do you put on a parade?' "
WMMR general manager Michael Craven told Billboard. Cra-
ven had little idea either, but DeBella went on the air the next
morning and announced that the following Monday-April
Fool's Day-WMMR would stage the first "Louie Louie" pa-
rade, across Chestnut Street to Independence Mall.
Amazingly, four hundred participants showed up, played ka-
zoos, wore funny hats, and marched to the duh duh duh. duh
duh beat. Even more amazingly, five thousand spectators turned
out to watch them make happy fools of themselves. At the end
of the parade, everybody gathered 'round and sang "Louie
Louie." At least, they sang the parts they could recall. The rest
they hummed or played on kazoos.
"The time was right," explained the jovial, walrus-mus-
tached deejay. Through the gentle outrages of his morning drive-
time program, "I was sort of Philadelphia's unofficial entertain-
ment director." But it never occurred to either DeBella or Craven
that the "Louie" parade could be repeated.
The following January, though, people started phoning
WMMR to ask, "Are you going to do the 'Louie Louie' parade
again this year?" The second-most-frequent inquiry: "How can
I be in it?" By the first of February, DeBella knew that the event
would be repeated-this time on a slightly longer route-but
even he didn't imagine that the turnout would be so much
ISS LOUIE LOUiE
greater: 1,000 marchers and 60,000 spectators. Once again the
day closed with a "Louie Louie" singalong. Once again DeBella
said, "Everybody knew the chorus. Nobody knew the lyrics."
DeBella developed his own theory about the parade. For one
thing, he pointed out, "Everybody can do a version of this song.
It cracks me up. I remember, I had Lou Gramm of Foreigner on
the show, live, and I asked him, 'Can you sing "Louie Louie"?'
'Of course I can.' So he sang it, backed my band, the Flaming
Caucasians. And he even sang it with the mistakes in the right
place."
Besides that, there was the whole idea behind the parade:
Everybody was eligible to participate; everybody who'd never
had a parade finally got one. "Men who can't tie shoes-they
have a parade," DeBella proclaimed. "But this was a parade for
no reason, a parade for people who could never be in a parade."
There were only three reasons for marchers being excluded: If
they were too similar to an earlier entry, excessively stupid, or
doing something flat-out dangerous.
As a result the parade, like "Maximum 'Louie Louie,' " be-
came a ceremony as close to potlatch as consumer society could
come, a ritual in which those who ordinarily found themselves
asked for nothing except rampant consumption and noncriminal
(not even "good") behavior, found a place to pour out everything
they had. All because they needed to fill the same gnawing gnos-
tic cavity as Rockin' Robin Roberts, bringing forth what was
within them to save their very souls, even if the destruction they
faced was nothing more than silent strangulation amidst the
mid-Eighties landscape of grasping greed and claustrophobic
conformity.
WMMR sponsored the parade but it grew out of all propor-
tion to the station's investment. "Logistics was our true function,
really, and that didn't amount to much," said DeBella. "I don't
think we ever spent more than six or eight weeks on it." The
population of greater Philadelphia, in a rare moment that actu-
ally did manifest something like a brotherly spirit, made it a
mass event. The third year, 1987, the parade drew 1,200 march-
ers, including a re-formed version of the Kingsmen. The total
number of sidewalk supervisors reached 95,000.
"There were parents with kids in strollers," remembered
189
DeBella. "There were papier mache heads of me flying paper
airplanes. There were the Steuben Newsmakers with their Grub
Grub Machine; there was the Safe Sex Brigade, dressed in great
white trash bags, handing out condoms; there was the Louis
Louis XVI Brigade, with drums, wagons, and Marie Antoinette;
and the Franklin Institute Science Museum put together a
'Louie Louie' science project and blew these huge bubbles."
Marchers included a troupe mounted on Harley Davidsons; the
Fill Yer Mug Up Orchestra, who played "Louie Louie" by clink-
ing on beer bottles; and classical music themes represented by
the locally famous "Louie Louie" String Band. The climax was
a mass "Louie" in front of the 100,000-seat JFK stadium. "The
Louie heard 'round the world. Or at least in Scranton," People
called it.
"Louie Louie" had come so far from its termite beginnings
that it would now garner an ultimate American accolade of re-
spectability: It would become the official song of a disease.
The Leukemia Society of America (LSA) numbered among
its fundraisers several Philadelphia natives residing in Roches-
ter, New York. They persuaded Rochester's WCMF to hold a
"Louie" parade as a Leukemia Society benefit. The event raised
more than $3,000 and gained multi-media attention for the sta-
tion and the Leukemia Society. A few months later the Leuke-
mia Society approached WMMR about making the next year's
Philadelphia parade a benefit. Funds would be raised through a
variety of mechanisms, including corporate sponsorship (ar-
ranged by the radio station) from Taco Bell, which made a do-
nation and sold charity kazoos at its outlets-junk food wedded
to junk music.
The Leukemia Society and Taco Bell franchised the parade;
that first year they sold 150,000 kazoos in Philadelphia, Balti-
more, Cleveland, and Louisville, Kentucky. In its most sophisti-
cated variation, the Leukemia Society made money from cor-
porate donations, from ten -dollar registration fees for joining the
parade, from kazoo sales, and from a Walkathon tactic, in which
individual marchers solicited donations from friends and neigh-
bors based on the number of miles they walked.
The fullest blowout came in 1988, when WMMR and 50
other stations tied "Louie Louie" and leukemia together with
190
LOUIE LOUiE
parades, "club nights" that sometimes developed into "Louie"
marathons, and even kazoo sales at big-league baseball stadi-
ums. On August 7, during the LSA's annual telethon, national
grand marshal John DeBella presented the LSA with a $120,000
check representing the combined donations from all the pa-
rades.
But by 1989 "Louie Louie" and the Leukemia Society began
to become untethered. John DeBella had found that he was "do-
ing more interviews than radio shows," and the Philadelphia city
administration - unprepared or unwilling to cope with the secur-
ity and clean-up-began making permit difficulties. WMMR
sued the city for its obstructionism and in 1991 there was no
parade-and wouldn't be, DeBella said, until the city changed
its attitude.
Meantime, the Leukemia Society ran into copyright trouble.
Nobody had ever bothered to acquire permission to use "Louie
Louie." Probably, nobody thought of the song as anything but a
piece of American folk culture. But "Louie Louie" was copy-
righted material, and if the copyright proprietors allowed the
LSA and Taco Bell to continuing using it without permission,
they'd jeopardize their ability to collect from other users. The
matter was worked out behind the scenes but having to cough
up for the rights made the parades less lucrative to the Leukemia
Society. Anyway, even though the "Louie" association remained
a terrific fundraiser, it didn't exactly add to the gravity of leuke-
mia's image. So the LSA backed off.
These difficulties couldn't entirely stamp out the duh duh
duh. duh duh virus, however. On into the early nineties, DeBella
said, "People are still doing them all across the country. Some
for leukemia, some for the hell of it." Termites rule.
14
1& ~ h.O- Go1tn irL qifeM? 1& ~ h.O- f ~ ~ ?
- ~ ~ C?i. 8, fU. 22
' - - " " ' - - ~ he Leukemia Society of America dropped
"Louie Louie" because it smacked into a mira-
cle: In January 1986 Richard Berry reacquired
his song. Henceforth, Richard would receive not
only his BMI money, but three-quarters of publishing proceeds
from record sales and use of "Louie" in movies, TV shows, and
commercials, for instance.
Richard's interest in "Louie" revived just as mid-eighties in-
terest in the song peaked. Besides "Maximum 'Louie Louie,' "
the "Louie Louie" parades, and two volumes of Rhino's Best of
Louie Louie (the second appeared in 1987), "Louie" maniacs
began a campaign to make "Louie" the Washington state song.
April 12, 1984, was proclaimed "Louie Louie" day at the state
capitol in Olympia. Hundreds of "Louie"ites turned up wearing
as a symbol of their abiding commitment, grey buttons stamped
with a pink outline of the state and "Louie Louie" printed over
it. Buck Ormsby, fellow surviving Wailers, and other Seattle mu-
sic notables turned up to pledge their support and, on the floor
of the Senate, Senator AI Williams of Seattle, the resolution's
191
192 LOUIE LOUiE
primary sponsor, debated Senator Arlie Dejarnatt of Longview,
in whose district lived Helen Davis, the composer of the current
state song. (Senate majority leader Ted Bottiger, a Tacoma kill-
joy, informed the Senate press desk that the debate took up only
what would have been lunch hour.)
Richard Berry came, too, in the state of suspended disbelief
he'd maintained ever since a network television reporter first
called him about the story. "Gimme a break" was his initial re-
sponse. But he agreed to train back to the Northwest and even to
a rewrite: "Me ride the train, goin' with the Wailers, the Kings-
men, they all gon' be there," a version that Buck Ormsby actu-
ally recorded with Junior Cadillac, a local Seattle band.
"And then it started really getting political," Richard said
with his characteristically rueful attitude about all the crazy shit
important people have done with his tune. "Like the governor of
Washington had never heard 'Louie Louie,' and the other Sen-
ators were saying, 'Well, you know, what kind of governor is this,
he's never heard the song?' And so the governor sent out to get
all the versions of 'Louie.' "
Finally, in March 1985 a resolution was introduced in the
Washington state Senate to make "Louie Louie," with the new
words, the state song. Sponsored by Williams with the support
of nine others, it included among its various clauses, "Whereas
'Rock and roll' musicians have provided some of our citizens the
ability to express their pride, energy, and creativity through the
art of dance," from a legislature that would, less than a decade
later, attempt to prevent minors from listening to the stuff;
"Whereas Rockin' Robin Roberts, singer for the 'Wailers,' a
Washington musical group, was the original vocalist for the song
'Louie Louie' " (a story retailed with the politician's usual re-
gard for fact); and best of all, "Whereas some of our legislators,
citizens, and even the governor are not familiar with the song
'Louie Louie,' " which you had to love, since this was undoubt-
edly the first time a career politician had ever been chided for
not being an aficionado of something the FBI considered a
moral threat. The resolution passed the Senate the easy way, by
voice vote.
For better or worse, the governor and the Washington House
did not agree, so "Louie" 's status remains unofficial. Which
193
was okay with Richard: "I said, 'I'm really flattered, but can you
imagine someone going to meet a dignitary at an airport and
playin' duh duh duh. duh duh?"
Anyway, unofficial status is appropriate, since Richard Ber-
ry's recovery of "Louie" had nothing to do with the letter of the
law. American copyright law allows nothing like the so-called
moral right recognized by France and other nations, under
which a creator retains an inalienable smidgen of control over
the way in which his or her work is presented, displayed, and
performed, no matter who owns the commodity. There's not a
breath of U.S. legal precedent akin to the judgment of British
courts that if a record company or music publisher has obtained
excessive economic leverage over an artist, the contract is void
and the author gets his material back. In America the principle
is "let the seller beware." If a composer dies, his estate can re-
capture rights 28 years after the initial copyright was granted.
But if the writer lives, he's stuck with the deal.
Richard Berry accepted these terms as the down side of the
Jesse Belvin "grab the cash and split" principle. He'd never
made an effort to recover the "Louie" publishing rights. He pre-
ferred to write the deal off as bad luck.
Max Feirtag's wisdom consisted of two things: risking the
$750 for the rights to the song and holding onto those rights,
rather than selling them off himself for less than they were
worth. Make no mistake: Feirtag acquired the song entirely
within the bounds of record industry practice. In fact, he was
fairer than the Bihari brothers, since he never denied or muscled
in on Richard Berry's creative credit. The deal was unfair but
the unfairness was built into the system. "The Feirtags have read
some things that were taken out of [context]," Berry told me.
"I've never ever accused them of stealing the song from me. I
went to them. I said I need some money to get married. And I
knew the only way I was gonna get this money was I had to offer
them something. And I had these songs that I had written." Such
deals were the rule, and not only for black artists: According to
Jack Ely, the contract eventually signed between the Kingsmen
and Jerry Dennon gave the band a 3 percent royalty, while the
one between Dennon and Wand Records gave him 10 percent.
Richard's harshest criticism of Feirtag reflects his disappoint-
19Cf LOUIE LOUiE
ment in a lack of paternalism. "Even after the record became a
big record, I think if they hadda came to me and says, 'Look,
Richard, we know that at the time you signed this song [over]
your condition wasn't what it could have been or what it should
have been. So we feel that maybe there was a little unfair advan-
tage that we had, because you wanted to get married and you
needed it, so we're gonna give you another $100,000, and we
really want you to sign a paper saying 'Adios.' ... "
For many years, Richard just avoided the whole "Louie
Louie" issue. But in 1983 his old friend, schoolmate, and some-
time backup singer, Darlene Love, got in touch with Richard.
Love perhaps the most talented female vocalist rock has ever
known, served as both the true queen of the Phil Spector Wall of
Sound (though she got no royalties at all for her work on such
great hits as the Crystals' "He's a Rebel") and, as the lead of the
Blossoms, the premiere vocal backing group on L.A.'s sixties
studio scene. Love told Richard that a man named Chuck Rubin
wanted to talk to him about regaining the rights to "Louie
Louie."
Rubin, a reformed booking agent, started looking into recap-
turing publishing and record royalty monies for R&B singers in
the late seventies. By 1983 his company, Artists Rights, had
made some impressive settlements. Artists Rights was deeply en-
tangled in a long (and ultimately successful) lawsuit with the
notorious mobster/mogul Morris Levy and Roulette Records
over the copyright renewal for Frankie Lymon and the Teen-
agers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" It had also begun a long-
term battle to badger Atlantic Records into giving more honest
royalty accountings to the Coasters, Drifters, and Sam and Dave,
among others.
Rubin didn't lack respect for the music, but he went into the
business of R&B equity because he realized that recapturing
song copyrights and adjusting royalty accounts could be highly
lucrative, especially since his fee was 50 percent of the recovered
proceeds, in perpetuity. A steep commission, but it seemed like
a bargain to writers and performers who'd gotten nothing but a
shaft for two or three decades.
"When I told Chuck about 'Louie Louie' and how I sold the
195
rights, he said, 'Well, let me look into it. I'll tell you right off the
bat if there's anything that can be done,' " said Richard.
Rubin asked Berry for a copy of the copyright assignment to
Limax. Richard sent it along with all due skepticism. "I still felt
that it was a no-win situation," Richard told me. "I knew that
legally there wasn't anything that the Feirtags had did. I mean,
like they didn't coerce me into signing. I tried to make myself
believe that at times, when I started feeling guilty about [selling
the song]. But they didn't."
Maybe not, but Rubin hadn't become a successful entrepre-
neur in the rhythm and blues field without learning the tricks of
the old school. For one thing, the nuisance value of any lawsuit
couldn't be underestimated. Anyway, Richard had operated un-
der an unfair disadvantage-you could argue that case for any
black man in America from the first slave who stumbled off the
boat up to Michael Jackson - and though it was hardly likely to
stand up in court, there was no rule against trying. Did Feirtag
really want to go to the expense of proving the case? There may
have been other elements that Rubin brought to bear, though
he's cagey about what they were. Or maybe Richard just got
lucky for once.
In any event, when Rubin called back, Richard recalled, he
said, "I think that there's something that might be done."
Rubin got nowhere on the matter for the first two years; in
fact, his entreaties served only to alienate Max Feirtag further.
That's why Feirtag refused to allow Rhino to use the original
Richard Berry and the Pharoahs' recording on the Best of Louie
Louie compilation. (Berry's re-recording sounded so close to the
original that Feirtag threatened to sue producer Richard Foos. It
took an expert opinion to persuade him that the Rhino track was
a new version. Copyright does not [yet] impede a performer from
imitating himself.)
In 1985, Rubin and Berry caught their break. Limax didn't
want the song tied up in litigation because a big deal was in the
offing. Chiat-Day, a Los Angeles-based advertising agency,
wanted to feature the song in a commercial for California
Cooler, a brand of "wine coolers" (the fizzy, fermented soda pop
enjoying a mid-eighties buzz). "Louie Louie" would be the
theme song for a campaign featuring California Coolers as "the
196 LOUIE LOUiE
Real Stuff," the original surfer's choice cooler. "The beach-party
theme ... shows frat rats and party animals downing the stuff
from the original wide-mouth jars," wrote the San Francisco Ex-
aminer when the California Cooler ads hit the air the following
autumn. "It stresses surfers, the outdoors, revelry, and good
times - in essence, everything that's wonderful about the Golden
State."
Chiat-Day wound up using such frat-flavored party songs as
the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'," Little
Richard's "Tutti Frutti," and Booker T. and the MGs' "Green
Onions" in other aspects of the campaign. "Louie Louie" was
the ideal centerpiece-but if there was an ongoing legal squab-
ble, "Wild Thing" might serve the purpose.
That wasn't quite all there was to it, but it was enough to put
the deal over the top and, effective January 1, 1986, Limax gave
in and reassigned half the copyright of "Louie Louie" to Rich-
ard Berry's American Berry Music, which gave him 75 percent
of the song (half the publisher's share plus the entirety of the
writer's share). Of the twenty grand Chiat-Daypaid for "Louie,"
American Berry and Artists Rights split $13,500. Richard Berry
was off the welfare line for good.
He lost only one important point. "When Chuck made the
deal, he says, 'Now we can get the song, the publishing, the
copyright, but no back money.' And I was hoping that I could get
maybe thirty or forty grand in back money. But I knew that we
had the wine cooler commercial and that was seventy-five hun-
dred right there for me. Which looked a hell of a lot better than
two hundred and forty a month on welfare."
The California Cooler ads kept the mid-Eighties "Louie" re-
vival alive for another season, and it had a substantial payoff for
Richard. The commercial was one of the most brilliant uses of
rock music ever made in an advertisement. The Kingsmen barg-
ing into the soundtrack brought it to life, and there followed a
glimpse of what the song had become: A jazz group, an opera
singer, and a mariachi combo fell under "Louie" 's spell.
This time, Richard got paid not only a BMI smidgen when
his song hit the airwaves, but also every time California Cooler
gave away a copy of The Best of Louie Louie as a promotion; every
time the Kingsmen, who got back together to do a promotional
197
tour sponsored by California Cooler, did a gig. "When we got
that wine cooler commercial, I knew. Hey, that made me feel so
good. Because for one time when they were singin' 'Louie
Louie,' I said, 'Yeah, I'm gettin' paid. I'm gettin' paid.'"
Richard even settled with the taxman on the BMI income
he'd previously been unable to pay. From the first year onward
he said, "I made more money in one year than I think I've ever
made in this whole business." In 1989 he made almost $160,000
from the song.
Still, "Louie" seems destined to be dogged by controversy.
Chuck Rubin and his attorney in the matter, Richard Bennett,
had a falling out and Bennett tried to claim that Berry should be
paying him a commission, in addition to or rather than what he
paid Artists Rights. The Leukemia Society made sparing use of
the song after Rubin reminded them that there was a price to
pay. Nevertheless, "Louie Louie" is ubiquitious, a staple of ol-
dies radio stations, frat-party weekends, punk bands in search of
a third chord, balding baby-boomers looking for a tune that sig-
nifies glory days. The marching band version has become a sta-
ple of the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers,
the University of Southern California Trojans, and Notre Dame,
and every high school half-time band that hopes to finally get
the grandstand to give it some attention. "Louie" pops up in
movies like Naked Gun and Fright Night 2. Listen closely on your
next elevator ride and you just might catch Muzak's duh duh
duh. duh duh, though, of course, "Let's give it to 'em, right now"
gets lost in the translation.
The complications could be personal, too. "The accountant
told me this year, 'Well, you know you're in the 39 percent tax
bracket,' " Berry recalled a couple years back. "I said, 'What is
that?' He says, 'Well, you know, you gotta figure that you owe 39
percent of whatever you made to the government.' I said, 'You're
kidding-39 per cent? You're talking about forty thousand dol-
lars.' He said, 'Yeah, I can get it down to about twenty-five but
you gotta give me five.' I said, 'Take it.' "
But Richard has a ready resolution for such difficulties. "You
know, it's like a friend of mine says, 'Four years ago you would
have given anything to make what you payin' in taxes, wouldn't
you?' I said, 'I would've given anything to have made twenty
198 LOUIE LOUiE
thousand dollars.' So it is a difference. And Artist Rights have
really worked with the song. I mean, you know, because some-
times if you get the rights back to the song, all you've got is a
piece of paper, because generally there's no money. I just hap-
pened to be lucky."
That's one way to look at it.
In this sense the story of "Louie Louie" boils down to long
green. But if there's one thing to be learned here, it's that a song
like "Louie" exists and persists for reasons more cosmic than
commercial. Getting paid doesn't even head Richard Berry's list
of satisfactions - he talks with more relish about his son, Marcel,
whose music fills Richard's answering machine tape, and about
his daughter, Christy, and her striving for a criminology degree:
"She wants to be an FBI agent."
Richard himself has lost the desire to record. Today the proc-
ess is too cold. There are no more hits made on foggy holiday
nights - although the practice of running in a ringer when a
group's lead singer proves inadequate remains common.
Now the Jesse Belvin principle has evaporated because
there's mainly only memory to grab hold of. Yet the music made
on those L.A. nights retains its power and magic. On CD, "Pass
the dynamite!" and "Roll with me, Henry!" and "A fine little
girl, she waits for me," continue to capture imaginations. It's
history.
And history has changed "Louie Louie." "History has
changed it because the majority of people who are familiar with
'Louie Louie' now are familiar with 'Lou-ay, lou-ay,'" said
Richard. "You know, mine is 'Lou-ee, Lou-ee.' I'm doin' it 'Lou-
ay, Lou-ay.' I'm doin' it their way. That's the way people wanna
hear it.
"I mean, I mix it. Some nights I'm not up to the Kingsmen;
sometimes I just wanna say, [sweetly] 'Lou-ee, Lou-ee.' But then
I know to get that party thing, it's gotta be 1963."
Was that all it was, that party feeling? Was that what Hunter
Hancock and Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Kingsmen and you
and me and all our termite brethren had (yes, Jack Ely's mother
was correct) fallen in love with? Richard thought it over.
"Well, you know what it was. I think it was-at that period of
199
time, if anybody would have asked me ... I think just because it
was 'Louie Louie.' " He almost whispered the words.
It was the rhythm? The sound?
"And not only that, it was just 'Louie Louie.' You know, when
I really think about it, it was," he crooned the words softly, to
himself, the way he might have done back in the Harmony Park
Ballroom: " 'Louie Louie, me gotta go.' It wasn't like if you said,
'Joey Joey' or 'Billy Billy'; it was 'Louie Louie,' you know. And for
me it was still the identification. I think that's the greatest idea I
could have ever had."
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ouie Louie" remains the best of songs and the
worst of songs. It has been a rock'n'roll song, a
calypso, a sea chanty, filthy and obscene, and
certainly, it tells the story of rock'n'roll all by
itself, just as promised. No one, having come this far, can deny
that it remains a ridiculous, damnable piece of trash, though, of
course, it's equally undeniable that the culture that breathed life
200
201
into "Louie" wages eternal war over the nature and value of
trash. That "Louie" casts a spell and ought to have been forgot-
ten, that it has served R&B and punk equally well, that its text is
both as sacred as anything in urban folklore and the very locus
of barbarism in the legendry of our time-none of this can be
denied. It persists as an old story, though perhaps the legend is
marred, for it's surely no longer an untold story.
Does "Louie Louie" answer our questions? It answers the
answerable ones and spits in the eye of anybody who demands a
solution to the ones that aren't. What Richard Berry, Rockin'
Robin Roberts, Jack Ely, and the paraders and marathoners who
are their brethren and heirs have to teach us is this: Embrace
"Louie Louie" tightly enough and you may come to know more
about yourself than it's easy to contemplate, let alone tolerate.
But you'd better watch out: Squeeze it in the wrong place, or for
a millisecond too long, or with one erg too much energy, and it'll
squirt all over you like a plastic bottle of ketchup-and
"Louie" 's even more likely to leave a stain. 'Tis not only the
floor of heaven that's littered with banana peels. If it's worth any-
thing, so is the floor of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (To which
"Louie Louie" remains shockingly unadmitted-unadmissible,
even, which makes some sort of statement about that fine insti-
tution.)
Which is to say that even the answerable questions only lead
to further imponderables. Those who know, know; and those
who don't, can go right ahead and ask because there is not, in
this medium, any way to spell it out any clearer than by contin-
uing to inquire. Does that make all the foregoing just a shaggy
dog story about the ontogeny-not to say ontology-of Frank
Zappa's musical stock module? Is it a parable about what hap-
pened to rock'n'roll on its journey from being a despicable spe-
cies of throwaway R&B to something so utterly respectable its
Hall of Fame merits an $80 million mausoleum in Cleveland?
Can you figure it out from understanding what made Richard
Berry croon a secret into Rockin' Robin Roberts' ear that Jack
Ely overheard and yawped at the world, which slightly misun-
derstood him? Does the intro to "Purple Haze" really make ref-
erence to "Louie Louie"? Did J. Edgar Hoover really miss the
point or was he the only one who truly grasped its true danger to
202 LOUIE LOUiE
the moral and cultural health of our Nation? And for that matter,
if our world were conquered by the potlatch mentality, would an
undercurrent of duh duh duh. duh duh replace the voice of the
turtle in the land? Each of us, perhaps, has our own answer. We
sing about that homesick sailor to discover how close our per-
sonal version comes to the others.
I say "Louie Louie" shaped the modern rock'n'roller's entire
world. Go ahead and dismiss the very possibility, the way your
ancestors laughed at the idea that all mammals are ultimately
the offspring of beings the size and shape of shrew. You'd rather
descend from a monkey like John Lennon - I know you would
and so would I (and so would he)-but you're descended from
"Louie" anyhow and there ain't a damn thing you can do about
it except either claim it or nickname it.
Oh, you dwellers in this time of absurdity and despair! Need
I convince you that it was "Louie Louie" that prophesied it
all, beginning with the deterioration of "musical quality"-
and I mean "quality" as defined by players of rock'n'roll,
let alone more high-falutin' types. Remember, when the dimwits
claimed he'd dissed Jesus, Lennon, under pressure from his
comrades and manager, backed down. "Louie Louie" did not
back down; it wallowed in its spurious obscenity forevermore and
without apology, no matter what the achy breaky feelings of its
proprietors.
Today (Right Now! as that idiot Sammy Hagar might bellow)
the cutting edges of popular music provide the Rosetta Stone for
understanding the legacy of "Louie." Not that decoding the por-
tents found in the fable of duh duh duh. duh duh requires the
expertise of a cipherer or semiotician. Fuck theory. All you really
need to do is pay attention, though our age of Ten -Minute Won-
ders eschews that task in favor of semiotic filibusters.
In the first place, "Louie Louie" connects to Right Now! back
at the main stem; Richard Berry's South-central L.A. bad-ass
persona, exemplified in "Riot in Cell Block #9" et seq., not only
grandfathered the nineties generation of gangsta rappers, but
the trouble "Louie" had with the cement-headed minions of J.
Edgar Hoover foreshadowed the ways in which rappers like
N.W.A., Ice Cube and, most famously, Ice-T have been battered
and beleaguered.
203
Clearly, termites have been at work here, for the chain of
descent that links "Louie Louie" to "Cop Killer" reverses
Marx's pseudo-Hegelian dictum that, when history repeats it-
self, tragedy precedes farce. What happened to "Louie" repre-
sents a species of low comedy, a bungling bureaucratic night-
mare in which their own preconceptions prevented the Bureau's
geniuses of criminology from reaching a perfectly obvious con-
clusion. But in 1989, when the FBI wrote to Priority Records,
condemning N.W.A.'s album Straight Gutta Compton, because
it contained the song, "F --- Tha Police," and suggesting that the
company place cops beyond criticism; and when it turned out
that the cement-head in question, who reported directly to
Hoover's successor, had written his missive without ever hearing
the song in question; and when that led to the banishment of the
song from the group's repertoire on a nationwide tour; and when
that led to a police riot and the illegal detention of N.W.A. in
Detroit, the only place where so much as a verse of their best-
known song got performed, farce had, for the first time in hu-
man history, for all I know, come about before the manifestation
of tragedy.
The direct consequence of that FBI letter (an epistle in fact
spawned by an anti-N.W.A. campaign conducted by a far-right
church group with big league connections in the Reagan/Bush
White House) was the banishment of dozens of rap albums by
America's largest record retailers; the spectacle of teens lining
up to find an of-age "buyer" for their favorite music, the way we
used to try to find one at the liquor store; a national "debate"
over whether rappers threatened the lives of cops, which mar-
shalled all manner of anecdotes without the hint of a policeman
actually so much as stubbing his toe while carrying a case of Ice
Cube cassettes to the pyre; and ultimately, the banishment and
public excoriation of Ice-T for daring to conceive a song in which
a fed-up ghetto dweller decides to end the cycle of police abus-
ing citizens by any means necessary. You can't avoid the fact that
this FBI probe had its (conceptual, if not procedural) roots in the
one surrounding "Louie Louie" but it's no farce-you can tell
by the bruises on Rodney King's face.
Don't, for God's sake, take that as an indication that farce
has gone missing from "Louie" 's story. In an age when the res-
20ct LOUIE LOUiE
idue of elephant trash piles up way higher than knee-deep from
here to the White House, the very idea of farce's absence quali-
fies as an absurdity. Indeed, the trendiest musical development
of the early nineties steeped itself in farce (partly as a means of
coping with assorted tragedies). As it happens-or maybe not so
coincidentally-that trend sprang up out of Seattle.
This was grunge, the postpunk response to the undying pot-
latch impulse, a brand of music-or let's say, given its cultivated
amateurishness and doting on dissonance, a distinctive assort-
ment of noises - determined to explode pomposity once and for
all, preferably by dancing on its face. Loud, fast, nasty; careen-
ing, furious, as influenced by smack as punk had been by speed
and garage rock by bad acid washed down with cheap suds; a
voice of the age that denied all possibility of connection between
one human and another, while insisting on putting itself directly
in the listener's face, grunge produced paragons like Alice in
Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana, who reveled in
self-contradiction as the true, if unknowing, sons of duh duh
duh. duh duh that they were.
Grunge bands performed nothing as retro as "Louie Louie,"
and their smeary sound made no accommodation to stop-time
rhythms. Nevertheless, grunge at its best reproduced exactly the
spirit of "Let's give it to em, right now!' " In fact, it treated that
declamation as a basic manifesto of human experience, perhaps
even as a human right.
The termite spirit embedded so deeply in grunge's biggest
hit, Nirvana's 1992 "Smells Like Teen Spirit," that disc jockeys
referred to it as "the 'Louie Louie' of the nineties." The com-
parison made less musical than cosmic sense, but it did not lack
a practical side. Like "Louie," only more so, "Teen Spirit" re-
veals its secrets only reluctantly and then often incoherently. It's
a yowl of pain and bitter anguish, a leap (for what? not anything
so simple as riches and stardom) that hates itself for bothering
to care. "Teen Spirit" is as mournful as it is angry, and it is one
of the most pissed-off records ever made. It's a song whose sub-
ject can only be suggested after the blunt trauma of hearing it:
death, stardom, fandom, consumption, production, overkill, un-
derattention, obscenity, and feeling fucked in the head all loom
toward you, even though they float up from a sonic soup so dense
205
with remorseful guitar and ballistic drum attack that you'd have
to be the sonic equivalent of an experienced anthracrite miner to
parse out the exact details of what's going on.
I'm not sure anybody really knows what the words are, not
even Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who wrote and sang them. Lord
knows what rumors could be construed from the fragments-
"Hello, hello, hello / How long" and "Here we are now, enter-
tain us / I feel stupid and contagious" -that leap out of the over-
amped guitar murk. So far, no such folklore has surfaced,
though it needn't since the gossip about Nirvana's chemically
saturated personal lives has taken its place.
In fact, I spent some time attempting to decipher the lyrics of
"Teen Spirit," listening to it over and over again to try to deci-
pher just what the hell Cobain was saying. I reached some inter-
esting conclusions, convincing myself that the opening line must
be "Well, the lifestyle it was dangerous" and that the first verse
ended, according to my notes, "with two thoroughly incompre-
hensible lines in which he could be hollering anything: 'It's an
idol,' 'I'm in denial,' or 'revival,' or 'I'm on vinyl,' followed by
'I'm a Beatle,' though for that matter it could just as easily be
'beetle.' " Fortunately, CD players operate at just one speed.
Despairing of reaching any conclusion, I stumbled into what
seemed a piece of luck: an invitation to have cocktails with
Johnny Rotten at Coco Pazzo, a chic New York restaurant. Intro-
duced to Rotten, I immediately grilled him: "I figure you're the
only person left to ask. Do you know the lyrics to 'Smells Like
Teen Spirit'?"
"Yes." He unveiled his ferociously toothsome grin. "But I
know something more important." A long leering pause. "Never
get involved with drugs. You always get caught." Well, even I
knew that much.
There were no frat-house buddies to turn to, no school bus
rides on which to speculate, and anyway, such is the failure of
the contemporary imagination that "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
had already been written into rock'n'roll history as incompre-
hensible. But I wanted-by now, I needed-to know what kind of
barside shaggy dog story Kurt Cobain, true scion of Richard
Berry that he'd proven to be, might have invented. Or at least, I
206 LOUIE LOUiE
wanted a version more trustworthy than the evidence of my own
ears.
So I got into a taxi and traveled cross-town to a music store
where, with a blush, I asked for a copy of "Smells Like Teen
Spirit." It cost $3.79 plus tax.
Now, the sheet music of rock'n'roll songs is notoriously
meaningless. Half the time, the notes and chords are so shred-
ded and mangled that the transcribers can't make them out, the
band certainly hasn't bothered to write down what it plays before
it starts rolling tape, and anyhow, it's just another tiny part of the
cash flow, less lucrative than T-shirt concessions, so most
rock'n'roll songwriters probably never even bother to look at
their own lead sheets. Why would they? They know what they're
singing and playing. And why should they give it up, since part
of the whole reason for making rock'n'roll is to do something
that speaks directly to those who get it and remains utterly un-
fathomable to everybody else, even if they have gotten elected
governor or appointed head of the secret police?
But I coughed up that $3.79 anyway and I took the flimsy
document home and put "Teen Spirit" back on the box and let
it blast, 'round midnight. I read along as the music played. All
that stuff about revival, denial, and beetles turned out to be "A
mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido." What's worse, it
scanned perfectly.
The point, if there is one, is that what I imagined was quite a
bit better (at least, more gratifYing) than what Nirvana actually
sang. The story I constructed made sense out of both the restless
noise the group created and their own rebellious, self-immolat-
ing posture in the face of fame. The fact that my version bore
only the most fragmentary relationship to what the group said it
sang (and what I now believed it to be singing) didn't extinguish
the song. But I won't deny that it diminished it a bit. Worst of
all, I'm not sure that I know more about "Smells Like Teen
Spirit" now than before I plunked down for the official version
of the facts.
Or maybe that should be "best of all." Knowing what's in the
documents results in elephantine bloat. But a true termite knows
the stories that reside in the heart and soul of the matter. If there
207
is a rational reason why "Louie Louie" and our love for it per-
sists, words will come no closer to its essence than that.
Therefore ...
Me gotta go.
1/1/7. 11"-0. "-0 . II
/I 1/ LO--)uJY\.WYL c:::J- (){)...LQ, c:::J- (){)...LQ, :
This Discography is by "Louie"cologists Doc Pelzel, Stretch Rie-
dIe, and Phil Dirt.
This listing of different versions of "Louie Louie" contains,
for each entry:
Artist
Title of LP, EP, CD, 12-inch, 45, VHS
Label, Catalog Number
Date Recorded and/or Released
Musical Genre
Notes
Format
Length
The Date Recorded and/or Released, if not printed some-
where on the version itself, is listed with an estimated year as
"circa." The Musical Genre is a loose categorization identifying
in which section of a record store the version would most likely
be found. The Notes contain additional information to identify
208
209
or differentiate the version. If a version has a title other than
"Louie Louie," that title is listed in Notes, except for 45s, in
which case that title is in Title. If composer credits for the version
are other than Richard Berry, those credits are given in Notes. To
help minimize confusion for seekers of additional "Louie
Louie" versions not listed here, some Notes list other releases on
which the version being discussed has appeared, especially if
that appearance was as an imitation "live" version or with a dif-
ferent real or erroneous Length. Also as a convenience for ver-
sion seekers, this discography does not conform to the Phonolog
convention of separate listings for "Louie Louie" and "Louie,
Louie."
To be listed in the discography, a version must be a perform-
ance of "Louie Louie" distinctly different from any other re-
cording listed. Edits, remixes, and overdubs of one performance
do not count as different versions, but are listed when possible
in the Notes section of the version of which they are alterations.
Some artists, therefore, who have "Louie Louie"s of different
lengths on different albums, or who have studio and live "Louie
Louie"s on different albums, may only be listed in this discog-
raphy once if those "different versions" are actually reprocessed
from one recorded performance. Conversely, artists may have
multiple listings for versions with the same length if those ver-
sions were recordings made at different times and/or with differ-
ent personnel performing.
It would be gratifying but ludicrous to call this listing "The
Complete 'Louie Louie' Discography," because only those ver-
sions that could be physically located and verified by the discog-
raphers have been included. Versions that "informed sources"
said they "were sure" existed did not get included (even if, as
Isaac Asimov said about life forms on other planets, it is mathe-
matically certain they exist). Because this discography is the
largest listing of renditions thus far, the title "Maximum 'Louie
Louie' " still seems appropriate.
Additional versions of "Louie Louie" are still being sought
and readers are encouraged to submit documentation of existing
versions that are not listed. Submissions should include all avail-
able information and fulfill the criteria for being a different ver-
sion outlined above. Submissions should be made to:
210
Maximum "Louie Louie"
% KFJC-FM
12345 El Monte Road
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
LOUIE LOUiE
Readers who submit information about versions not listed in
"Maximum 'Louie Louie' " will receive an updated discography
incorporating all additions to the master list given here.
Africa
Music From 'Lil Brown'
Ode Records, Z1244010
Circa late 1960s
Rocklfunk
LP
(5:40)
:'-laTE: This version is part of a medley with "Ode to Billie Joe."
Andress, Tuck
Reckless Precision
Windham Hill, WD-0124
1990
Acoustic folk/jazz
Angels, The
A Halo to You
Smash Records, MGS 27048
Circa 1964
Pop female vocal
Los Apson
"Ya No Lo Hagas"
Peerless Records, EDP1263
NOTE: Group is from Agua Prieta, SONora, Mexico.
Arnold-Hedgecock Experience
Charade Records, CH-186434
1987
Rock
NOTE: Roger Hedgecock, former mayor of San Diego,
was removed from office for accepting illegal
campaign funds.
Australian Crawl
The Final Wave
Freestyle Records, SFL 1 0142
1966
Rock
NOTE: Song entitled "The Last Louie Louie" credited to
(Berry, Wheatley); live recording, Australian import.
CD
(3:41)
LP
(2:29)
Import
45
45
(2:41)
Import
LP
(5:06)
Barner, George and the Original Trendsetters
Breadline Records, 3528597
Circa 1985
Rock with horns
NOTE: George Barner, at time of recording, was Thurston
County Commissioner in the state of Washington.
Basement Wall
Texas Punk Volume 8 (compilation)
Cicadelic Records, CIC 978
Song recorded 1967; album issued 1986
Garage rock
Beach Boys
Shut Down Volume 2
Capitol Records, T2027
1964
Pop surf
NOTE: This version also on Best of the Beach Boys
Volume 1, Capitol DT 2545; For All Seasons, Pair!
Capitol PDL2-1068; Japanese Import CD Shut Down
Volume 2, Capitol CP216005; funerican Shut Down
Volume 2 later retitled "Fun Fun Fun."
Beau Brummels
Beau Brummels '66
Warner Brothers Records, WS1644
1966
Rock
Beau Brummels
Volume 44
Vault Records, 121
1967
Rock
NOTE: This version is a different performance from the
version on Beau Brummels '66.
Bedient, Jack and the Chessmen
Live at Harvey's
Fantasy Records, 8365
1965
Lounge jazz
NOTE: Song is entitled "Louis Louis" on LP.
211
45
(2:58)
LP
(1:22)
LP
(2:21)
LP
(2: 12)
LP
(2:41)
LP
(2:10)
212
Belushi, John
Animal House (soundtrack)
MCA Records, MCA 3046
1978
Frat rock
NOTE: This version is also on the Animal House CD,
MCA D31023 and on a single, MCA 40950.
Berry, Richard and the Pharaohs
Flip Records, Flip 45-321
1956
R&B
r-<OTE: The original 45 issue had "Louie Louie" as the B
side to "You Are My Sunshine." A later 45 issued with
the same Flip 45-321 catalog number had "Louie
Louie" as the A side and "Rock Rock Rock" as the B
side. If this discography were being compiled
chronologically, the version listed here would be
number one. This studio version is also on 12 Flip
Hits, Flip Records, Flip 1001, 1959; Golden Era Series,
Volume 3, Era Records, ESVOL3, circa 1967; Louie,
Louie, Earth Angel Records, JD901, 1986; Born Bad
Volume 4, Australian import LP, Born Bad Records,
BB004, 1989; Hawk, Condor Records, 100.
Berry, Richard
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:55)
45
(2:10)
Casino Club Presents Richard Beny Combo Live Session is listed on
LP front, and Richard Berry and the Soul Searchers Live Session is
listed on the LP center label.
, PR151-02
Circa 1960s
R&B
NOTE: There is no name for the record company issuing
this LP, neither on the center labels of the disc nor
on the front, back, or spine ofthe jacket.
Berry, Richard
Great Rhythm and Blues Oldies Volume 12
Blues Spectrum Records, BS112
1977
R&B
NOTE: This version produced by Johnnie Otis.
LP
(3:06)
LP
(2: 13)
Berry, Richard
Best of Louie, Louie
Rhino Records, RNEP 605
1983
R&B
NOTE: When Limax Music denied permission to Rhino
Records to use the original 1956 Richard Berry
"Louie, Louie" on their Best Of compilation, Rhino
commissioned Richard to re-record the song in a style
reminiscent of the original.
Black Flag
Poshboy Records, PBS 13
1981
Punk
NOTE: Credited to (Berry, Cadena). Despite different
times being listed, this version also appeared on Posh
Hits Volume 1, Poshboy PBS 8138, 1983; Everything
Went Black, SST Records, SST 015, 1983; The First
Four Years, SST Records, SST 021, 1983; Wasted
Again, SST Records, SST 166, 1987 (colored vinyl);
Duck and Cover, SST Records, SST 263, 1990. The
single has been re-issued as SST 175 numerous times
on different colored vinyl.
Black Flag
Who's Got the 10
1
/2
SST Records, SST CD060
Live recording August 23, 1985, Portland, Oregon
Punk
Blondie
Wet Lips Shapely Hips
Old London Records, OL91011
1979
New wave
NOTE: Recorded live in London.
Bloodclots
Raw Deal
Raw Records, RAWL 1
1977
Live garage punk
NOTE: British import.
213
LP
(2:18)
45
(1:27)
CD
(4:13)
Bootleg
Import
LP
(4:20)
Import
LP
(2:14)
21Lf
Broth
Broth
~ e r c u r y Records, SR 61298
1967
1960s' inner-city peace and love pop rock
NOTE: Group consisted of one member of each major
ethnic group, wearing bell bottoms and tie-dyes, posed
around a VW van.
Burgett, Jim
Recorded Live at Lake Tahoe
Wolfgang Records, LP 4321
Circa mid-1960s
Casino lounge music
Cannon, Ace
Sweet 'n' Tough
Hi Records, SHL 32030
June 1966
Pop jazz
Cano, Eddie and His Quintet
Brought Back Live from P. 1. 's
Dunhill Records, DS50018
Circa late 1960s
Latin pop jazz
NOTE: Besides "Louie Louie," LP also contains "Slip
Slip," "Wack Wack," and "Monday Monday."
Cats Under the Stars
Monkey Business Records, MBR 001
1982
Pop jazz/lounge vocal
Challengers
California Kicks
GNP Crescendo, GNP 2025
1966
Pop surf instrumental
Chan-Dells
Arc Records, 8102
August 1963
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(3:40)
LP
(2:12)
LP
(2:11)
LP
(2:05)
45
(3:00)
LP
(3: 15)
45
Checkmates, Inc.
Too Much
Ikon Records, IER 121-4
Circa 1960s
Casino lounge
215
LP
:"laTE: Recorded live at Harvey's Resort Hotel and
Casino; Side 1 begins with "Louie Louie" and Side 4
ends with "Louie Louie."
Clarke, Stanley and George Duke
ClarkelDuke Project
Epic Records, FE 36918
1981
Fusion jazz
Cramer, Floyd
Here's What's Happening
RCA Records, LPM 3746
1967
Easy listening
NOTE: Credited to (Barry [sic], Ortega, Decaro)
Crescent Street Stompers
Aquarius Records, AQ5041
Circa early 1970s
Pop psychedelic
Crest, Dick
Would You Believe the Dick Crest Orchestra
Mar-Tur Records, S 100 1
Circa late 1960s
Big band
Cult, The
Lil'Devil
Beggars Banquet Records, BEG 188TD
Recorded January, 1986
New wave
NOTE: "Louie Louie" is part of a live medley; British
import.
Day, Otis and the Knights
Otis My Man
MeA Home Video, 80392
1986
R&B
LP
(5:06)
LP
(2:30)
45
(2:45)
LP
(2:32)
Import
Double 12/1 45
(3:30)
Video
VHS HiFi
216
Don and the Goodtimes
The Hitmakers
Jerden, JRL 7005
Circa mid-1960s
Rock
NOTE: Don Gallucci, former Kingsmen member.
Doucet, Michael
Cajun Brew
Rounder Records, 6017
1988
Cajun
Dunn, Kevin
Tanzfeld
Press Records, P4007
1985
Industrial new wave
NOTE: British import.
Duplex
Battle of the Bands
Star Records, SRM101
1964
Garage rock
NOTE: Hawaiian battle of the bands competition. This
version re-issued on Pebbles Volume 16, AlP Records,
AlP 10023, 1985.
Eddie and the Subtitles
Skeletons in the Closet
The record label is called "No Label"
1980
Garage punk
NOTE: This version also issued on a 45 with no label, no
catalog number. This version replaces Black Flag's
version on the CD of Rhino's Best of Louie, Louie
compilation.
Ely, Jack and the Courtmen
Bang Records, B-520
"Louie Louie '66"
1966
Rock
NOTE: "Ely" is misspelled as "Eely" on label.
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(5: 12)
LP
(3:09)
Import
LP
(3:40)
LP
(2:10)
LP
(2:20)
45
(2:32)
Experience
Experience
Vogue Records, SLVLX575
Circa 1970s
Progressive
NOTE: French import.
Falcons, The
Phillips Records, 333-527JF
Circa 1966
Garage punk
NOTE: This Dutch single was included on The V-Lips
Greatest Hits compilation album, Frizzbe Records,
Frizz 6, 1985, released in Holland.
Fat Boys
Coming Bach Hard Again
Tin Pan ApplelMercury Records, 835809-2
1988
Mainstream rap
NOTE: This version also available as a 12" single, Tin
Pan ApplelMercury Records, 871011-1, with the
(5:42) version and a (3:50) edit. The (3:50) edit also
issued as a 7" single, Tin Pan ApplelMercury Records,
871010-7. Credits for rap lyrics to Jim "Jimbo"
Glenn.
Feelies
Jerden Records, 904
Circa mid-1960s
Rock
NOTE: This group is no relation to the 1980s' group with
the same name.
Flamin' Groovies, The
Still Shahin'
Buddah Records, BDS5683
1976
Rock
NOTE: This studio version also on Still Shahin' CD, Big
Beat Records, W1K925.
Flamin' Groovies, The
Slow Death, Live
Lolita Records, 5004
Recorded 1971; released circa 1983
Rock
217
Import
LP
(7:03)
Import
45
(2:38)
CD
(5:42)
45
(2:59)
LP
(6:45)
LP
(8:02)
218
NOTE: This version recorded at the Fillmore, San
Francisco, on June 30, 1971, which closed a week of
live quadraphonic broadcasts carried on KSAN -FM,
San Francisco (front two channels) and KOME-FM,
San Jose (rear two channels). The version on this LP is
from the KOME channels. A poor quality mono
recording of the KSAN channels appears on Bucket
Full of Brains, Voxx Records, VXS200.015, in 1983.
Also, a (7:20) length printed on album, but version
times at over 8 minutes.
Flamin' Groovies, The
Studio '70
Eva Records, EVA12045
Recorded in 1970; released in 1984
Rock
NOTE: This version recorded live at a rehearsal at the
Matrix club. This French import version is also on the
Groove In CD, limited edition of 1,000 copies printed
for Caroline, Revenge Records, EV300.
Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids
American Graffiti (movie)
LOUIE LOUiE
Import
LP
(6:14)
MCA Home Video, VHS 66010
1973 movie; 1984 video release
Rock
VHS Hi-Fi
KaTE: This version has Flash Cadillac and the
Continental Kids portraying "Herby and the
Heartbeats." Version released on video only and is not
on the soundtrack or any Flash Cadillac albums.
Flippers, The
Pebbles, Volume 28
Archive International Productions, AIP10046
Recorded 1966; released 1986
Garage R&B
NOTE: This version was originally released in Sweden in
1966 as a 45 on Karusell Records, KFF634.
Fountain, Pete
I've Got You Under My Skin
Coral Records, CRL 757488
Circa 1967
Easy listening
LP
LP
(2:08)
Friar Tuck
Friar Tuck and His Psychedelic Guitar
Mercury Records, SR61111
1967
Parody
NOTE: Friar Tuck is Gary Paxton and cronies. Song title
is listed as "Louis Louis." This version lampoons
many of the then-current soft rock groups (The
Mamas & The Papas, Fifth Dimension, etc.).
Bobby Fuller Four
EVA Records, EVA12032
Recorded 1964
Pop rock
NOTE: This French import was also released in
Germany on Line Records, OLLP 5302, in 1983. The
version is part of a medley: "Louie Louie"/"Farmer
John"/"Jenny Lee."
Girl Trouble
Stomp and Shout and Work It on Out
Dionysus Records, ID 123318
Recorded January 19, 1985; released 1990
Rock
Guru Josh
Infinity
Deconstruction Records, 2358-2-R
1990
Dance
Half Japanese
Our Solar System
Iridescence Records, K6
1981
New wave
NOTE: "Louie Louie" is about half of a studio medley.
Harper, Charlie
Stolen Property
Flicknife Records, SHARP 100
Recorded September, 1981
British pub rock
NOTE: Charlie Harper was a member of UK Subs.
"Louie Louie" is credited to the Kingsmen (but this
British import LP also has "Hey Joe" credited to
"Traditional' ').
219
LP
(4:56)
Import
LP
(2:33)
LP
CD
(4:09)
LP
(1:25)
Import
LP
(2:42)
220
Harrison, Wilbert
Let's Work Together
Sue Records, SSLP 8801
1969
R&B
NOTE: Also on 45, Juggernaut Records, 70SUG405,
(3:00)
H. B. and the Checkmates
Lavender Records, R1936-1
Circa 1966
Garage rock
NOTE: Reissued on Pebbles' Highs in the Mid Sixties,
Volume 7- The Northwest, AlP Records, AlP 10012,
1984. Song is entitled "Louise, Louise."
Heavy Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Family Production Records, FPS 2706
1972
Rock
NOTE: Heavy Cruiser was a Neil Merryweather group.
Hermanos Carrion
Lagrimas de Cristal Que Manera de Perder
Dimsa Records, DML 8672
1971
Folk-rock
NOTE: Song is entitled "Alu, Aluai" and is credited to
(Barry [sic], Ortega). Recording is a Mexican issue for
South American distribution.
Honey, Ltd.
Lhi Records, 1216
Circa mid-1960s
Easy listening
NOTE: Produced by Lee Hazelwood, this 45 is identical
on both sides, except for a short intro voiced by
Hazelwood on one side only.
Die Hornissen
"Spin Radio Underground Program"
Promo Only, NC 007U2
1986
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(5: 11)
45
(2:30)
LP
(3:26)
Import
LP
(2:41)
45
(2:59)
Broadcast
LP
(1:08)
New wave
NOTE: German group "The Hornets" do a live medley
that includes "Louie Louie" for this segment of the
"Spin Radio Underground Program" out of Los
Angeles.
Iggy and the Stooges
Metallic K. 0.
Skydog Records, IMP 1015
1976
Rock
NOTE: This version also issued as a French import CD
Metallic 2 X KG, Skydog Records, 622322CD.
Impossibles, The
Best of Louie, Louie
Rhino Records, RNEP 605
1983
Choral parody
Invictas
A Go-Go
Eva Records, EVA 12016
Recorded circa mid-1960s; released circa early 1980s
Top 40 cover club
NOTE: French import.
I Trappers
"Lui, Lui Non Ha"
CGD Records, ND9606
Jan and Dean
Command Performance
Liberty Records, LST 7403
1965
Pop surf
NOTE: This live version also on Golden Hits Volume 3,
Liberty Records, LST 7460.
Bobby Jay and the Hawks
The Watusi
Warner Brothers Records, WS 1562
Circa mid -1960s
Instructional pop dance
221
Import
LP
(3:24)
LP
(:37)
Import
LP
(2:25)
Import
45
(2:26)
LP
(2:44)
LP
(2:30)
222
Jones, J. J.
Misty
Wyncote Records, SW 9170
Circa mid-1960s
Piano bar organ
Joske Harry's
Arsa Records, AR107.
Junior Cadillac
Junior Cadillac Is Back
Great Northwest Records, GNWRC 000002
Circa early 1970s
Bar band
NOTE: Junior Cadillac is Buck Ormsby's band.
Kingsmen Featuring Jack Ely
60's Dance Party
Era Records, PBU 5000
Recorded 1976; released 1982
Rock
NOTE: This recording was made 13 years after the
original and is definitely not a remix.
Kingsmen, The
Jerden Records, 712
1963
Rock
NOTE: This version is the original studio recording with
Jack Ely vocals. It was also issued as "Louie Louie
'64-'65-'66" with the same Jerden catalog number.
This version was also issued as a 7" 45 on Wand
Records, 143; Scepter Records, SWF 21011 (with the
time incorrectly listed as 3:00); and Eric Records,
4007.
This version was overdubbed with concert audience
noise to create a "live" version, which was issued on
the In Person LP, Wand Records, WDM or WDS 657,
1963. The original studio version was issued on the
Kingsmen Greatest Hits LP, Wand Records, WDS 681,
1966.
This original version is probably the most
commonly anthologized version. Although the times
listed for it usually vary between (2:24) and (2:42), the
song has been on more than 50 compilations,
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:47)
Import
45
LP
(3:45)
LP
(2:42)
45
(2:42)
including Time-Life Presents '1964 The Beat Goes On,'
Time-Life Classic Rock Series, 1988, SCLR09; The
Northwest, Nuggets Volume 8, Rhino Records, RNLP
70032; Cruisin' 1963, Increase Records, INCM 2008,
1972; Quadrophenia, original movie soundtrack,
Polydor Records, PD-2-6235, 1979; Spud's
MacKenzie's Party Favors, Capitol Records, C 1-48993,
1988; Music to Watch Cartoons By, Phoenix Records,
8406; Encyclopedia of 100 Rock and Roll Super Hits,
TVP Records, TVP-1009, and (naturally) Best of Louie,
Louie, Rhino RNEP 605, 1983. The original studio
version is also the one most likely to be found on
syndicated radio program discs, tapes, and CDs, such
as "Continuous History of Rock and Roll, the Great
American Dream the Garage Bands," Rolling Stone
Magazine Show #8, broadcast November 28, 1981,
RSMP 81-8.
Kingsmen, The
10 Big Hits of the Rock and Roll Era
Audio Encores Records, AE1-1006
1980
Rock
NOTE: This 1980 Nashville re-recording mayor may not
have included appearances by original members of the
Kingsmen.
Kinks
Kinksize
Reprise Records, RS 6158
1965
Rock
NOTE: This version also appears on Kink Kingdom,
Reprise Records, 6184. An edit (:51) of this version
appears on a promo-only LP, Then, Now, and in
Between, Reprise Records, PRO 328, as part of a
crudely spliced medley.
Last, The
Best of Louie, Louie
Rhino Records, RNEP 605
1983
Rock
KaTE: This version also appears on a French import LP,
Painted Smiles on a Dead Man, Lolita Records, 5005.
223
LP
(2:42)
LP
(2:57)
LP
(3:21)
Les Dance and His Orchestra
Best of Louie, Louie
Rhino Records, RNEP 605
1983
Parody
KOTE: This version contains a David Bowie sound-alike
vocalist singing the words to "Louie Louie" over a
"Let's Dance" -ish musical arrangement.
Little Bill with the Adventurers and Shalimars
Topaz Records, T -1305
Circa 1960s
R&B
London, Julie
Yummy Yummy Yummy
Liberty Records, LST 7609
Circa 1968
Pop vocal
KOTE: The single of this version was Liberty Records
56085.
Lyres, The
Live at Cantone's
Pryct Records, PR1003
Recorded late 1970s; released 1987
Garage rock
Maddalena
"Lui Lui"
RCA Italiana Records, PM45-3413
NOTE: Italian import.
Magazine 60
Barclay Records, 200191
Released 1981
Dance
NOTE: This French import 12" club single contains
"Louie Louie" at the end of a long medley of 1960s
covers.
McCallum, David
Music- It's Happening Now!
Capitol Records, ST 2651
Circa mid-1960s
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:40)
45
(2:25)
LP
(2:40)
LP
(5:10)
Import
45
(2:45)
Import
12" single
(1:03)
LP
(3: 13)
Easy listening
1\IOTE: Yes, Illya Kuryakin from "The Man from
U.N.C.L.E." No, he doesn't sing. It's an instrumental.
MC5
Kick Copenhagen
Lawn Mower Records, MOW 11
November 1972
Pre-punk
M.C.K. and the Surfettes
"Life's a Beach"
Music Force Records, 30694
1988
Dance/rap
NOTE: There are four mixes: Radio version (4:33)
Instrumental version (5:30)
Summer Club Mix (5:30)
Spring Break Mix (6:01)
Mellodramatics
First American Records, FA 1209
1981
Dance
NOTE: There are two mixes: Vocal (7:23), Instrumental
(8:04)
Messengers, The
The Messengers
Rare Earth Records, RS 509
1969
1960s pop rock
Mitchell, Willie
On Top
Hi Records, SHL 32048
January 1969
Pop jazz instrumental
NOTE: Willie Mitchell was Cashbox magazine's
Instrumentalist of the Year, 1968.
Morticians, The
Morticians Records, 102
Circa 1968
Texas garage rock
225
Bootleg
Import
LP
(6:40)
12" single
(4:33)
12" single
(7:23)
LP
(3:11)
LP
(2:08)
45
(3:10)
226
Motorhead
Bronze Records, BRO 60
1978
Metal
NOTE: This British import version has also been on the
LP No Remorse, Pro Records, 823303-1, 1984; and on
Anthology, Raw Power Records, RAWLP011, 1985.
Nat and John
Charly Records, C92A
Nelson, Sandy
Boss Beat
Imperial Records, LP 12298
Circa 1966
Alternative easy listening
Our Brothers Keeper
King Records, 6399
Circa 1960s
Rock
Outcasts, The and The Sting Rays
Battle of the Bands Live, Round One
Cicadelic Records, CICLP 990
Recorded 1967; released 1984
Garage rock
Outta Place
We're Outta Place
Midnight Records, MIR 102
1984
Garage rock
Pink Chunk
Monster Wax Records, 79-120
Circa 1979
Self-abuse (Wild Man Fisher impaled on Portsmith
Symphonia)
Pink Finks
Raven EP LP Volume 3
Raven Records, RVLP20
Recorded circa mid-1960s; released 1984
Garage rock
NOTE: Australian import.
LOUIE LOUiE
Import
45
(2:42)
Import
45
(2:31)
LP
(2:28)
45
(2:30)
LP
(3:25)
LP
(2:14)
45
(4:57)
Import
LP
(3:12)
Piranhas, The
Somethin' Fishy
Custom Fidelity Records, CF -1452
Circa mid -1960s
Teen garage rock
Les Players
"Si C'Etait Elle"
Polydor Records, PPN1879
NOTE: French import.
Plunkett, Steve
My Attitude
Quality Records, 15179
(Circa ??)
Dance
NOTE: Also on CD single with Club Mix (4:48), Radio
Mix (3:14)
Promenaders
Promenaders
Y Records, Y31
1982
Polka
NOTE: This British import version is part of a medley.
Psychotic Petunias
Mayhem Records, Mayhem 1
(Circa ??)
Dirge instrumental with chipmunk vocals
Purple Helmets
Ride Again
New Rose Records, Rose 160
1988
British pub rock
NOTE: The "Louie Louie" on this French import is live.
The band consists of members of the Stranglers (J. J.
Burnel, Dave Greenfield), Vibrators (John Ellis),
and Interview (Manny Elias).
Pyramids, The
The Original Penetration
Best Records, BRS36501
1964
227
LP
(4:04)
Import
45
(2:25)
CD
(4:48)
Import
LP
(1:52)
45
(3:58)
Import
LP
(3:13)
LP
(1:55)
228
Surf
NOTE: Re-issued as Penetration, What Records, W12-
2404,1983.
Redding, Otis
Pain in My Heart
Atco Records, 33-161
1965
Soul
Red Square
Best of Louie Louie Volume 2
Rhino Records, R1 70515
1989
Russian rock
Renaud, Line
MGM Records, K14500
1973
Pop female vocal
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Sande Records, 101
1962
Rock
NOTE: This version was issued in June 1963 on
Columbia Records, 4-42814, a 45 backed with "Night
Train." It was first on LP in June 1967 on the Greatest
Hits album, Columbia Records, CL2662 (mono) and
CS9462 (stereo). (Later, KCL2662 and KCS9462,
when list prices went up.) The stereo LP contains the
original mono mix, which was "electronically re-
recorded to simulate stereo" for the May 1972 All-
Time Greatest Hits collection, KG31464. This version
also appeared on the Rhino Records Best of Louie
Louie Volume 2 compilation, Rl 70515, released in
late 1989; and on Columbia's CD anthology, The
Legend of Paul Revere, CZK 45311.
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Here They Come
Columbia Records, CL2307 (mono) and CS9107 (stereo)
August 1965
Rock
NOTE: This was a real "live" version, not just an overdub
of crowd noise onto the studio version.
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:05)
LP
(3:01)
45
(2:46)
45
(2:41)
LP
(2:48)
Paul Revere and the Raiders
"Louie Go Home"
Columbia Records,
Circa late 1963
Rock
NOTE: This is the "answer" song to "Louie Louie." It
was later used as the flip side to the Sande version on
Columbia Hall of Fame 45 4-33082.
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Special edition
Raider! America Records, RA 682
1982
Rock
NOTE: This live version, recorded at the Milwaukee
Summer Festival, was available through the Paul
Revere and the Raiders Fan Club.
229
45
LP
(3:14)
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Paul Revere Rides Again
Hitbound Records, 51-3013
1983
Cassette only
(2:12)
Rock
NOTE: This cassette-only version was a 1983 studio
recording custom-manufactured for Radio Shack.
Rice University Marching Owl Band
Rice University Marching Owl Band
MOB Records, MOB 121682
1982
Marching band
NOTE: This version later issued on Best of Louie Louie,
Rhino, RNEP 605.
Ripp Tides, The
Surf Wax Records, 1001
1981
Horn-based surf band
NOTE: This version was on a 10" EP.
Robbs, The
W'R IT Records, 1340
Circa mid-1960s
Rock
LP
(1 :09)
EP
45
(2:45)
230
Roberts, Rockin Robin
Etiquette Records, ET 1
1961
Northwest R&B
NOTE: Roberts fronts The Wailers.
Sandpipers
Guantanamera
A&M Records, SP 4117
1966
Spanish easy listening
NOTE: This version was credited to (Barry [sic], Ortega,
and DeCaro). It was also issued on Sandpipers Four
Sider, A&M Records, SP 3525; as a 45, A&M
Records, 819; and on Rhino Records Best of Louie
Louie, RNEP 605.
Santamaria, Mongo
Hey, Let's Party
Columbia Records, CS 9273
1967
Pop Latin
Sentinals
Vegas Go-Go
Sutton Records, SSU338
Circa mid-1960s
Top 40 cover band
Shaffer, Paul
Coast to Coast
Capitol Records, C 1-48288
1989
Pop
Shaggs, The
"Louis, Louis"
Concert Records, 1-78-65
1965
Garage rock
;\laTE: This all-girl garage band from New Ulm,
Minnesota, issued this variation on "Louie Louie"
backed with "Summertime News," a variation on
"Summertime Blues."
LOUIE LOUiE
45
(2:40)
LP
(2:45)
LP
(2:16)
LP
(3: 15)
LP
(3:31)
45
Shockwaves, The
Best of Louie Louie Volume 2
Rhino Records, R1 70515
1988
Surf
Sisters of Mercy
"Possession," "Rough Diamonds," "Cryptic
Flowers," "Ghost Riderz"
Skeleton Songs Records, Skelet 03;
Easy Flyte Records, Flight 140;
Metropol Records, no catalog #;
Takrl Records, 1402;
3/28/83 at Paradiso, Amsterdam, Holland;
6/5/84 at Nijmegen Doornroosje, Holland;
11/84, Germany;
3/16/85 at Leeds University, England
NOTE: The above four versions are all portions of
medleys in Sisters of Mercy live shows. Although they
are distinctively different recordings and not remixes
of one recording, their repeated performance as a
regular song in their tour act classifies them closer to
different takes or different mixes of the same session.
Slack
Deep Like Space
C/Z Records, CZ011
February 1988
Smith, Patti
Teenage Perversity and Ships in the Night
ZE/ Anonym Platten Spieler Records, ZAP 7854
January, 1976
Punk/new wave
NOTE: As with Sisters of Mercy, many variations exist,
all from live performance bootlegs on which "Louie
Louie" segues out of "Pale Blue Eyes.
Sonics, The
Etiquette Records, ET -23
1966
Raw garage rock
NOTE: This version also appeared on The Sonics Boom
LP, Etiquette Records, ETALB027, released in 1966.
231
LP
(2:03)
Bootleg
Promo
Import
LP
(7:35)
(11:00)
(6:35)
(5:30)
LP
Bootleg
LP
(1:10)
45
(3:00)
232
Sonics, The
Sinderella
Bomp Records, BLP 4011
Recorded 1967; released 1980
Garage rock
Sounds Orchestral
Janus Records, J124
Circa late 1960s
Easy listening
Springsteen, Bruce
RockinDays
Amazing Pig Records, TAP 009
1983
All-American rock'n'roll
Stand ells
In Person at PI. 's
Liberty Records, LST 7384
Circa 1967
Primordial punk
NOTE: This version also on Sunset Records, SUS 5136,
Live and Out of Sight LP.
Stewart, Dave and Barbara Gaskin
Spin
Rykodisc, RCD 20213
1991
Soft rock
NOTE: Version is part of a medley entitled "Cast Your
Fate to the Wind/Louie Louie," credited to (V.
Guaraldi, R. Berry). Stewart and Gaskin were
members of Hatfield and the North, and National
Health.
Stupid Set
"Soft Parade"
MMMH Records, MMMH0001
Recorded 1980; released 1981
Industrial
NOTE: This version credits (R. Berry, P. Bassani, G.
Huber, G. LaVagna, F. Sabbioni).
Los Supersonics
Los Supersonics
DCA Records, DIC1001
NOTE: San Salvadoran import.
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(4:02)
45
(3:46)
Bootleg
LP
(2:11)
LP
(4:10)
CD
(5:08)
Import
12" Single
(10:28)
Import
LP
Smfaris
Hit City '64
Decca Records, DL-4487
1964
Surf
Surfaris
Surfaris Live
Koinkidink Records, KWK 102
Recorded September 18, 1981; released 1983
Surf
Surkamp, David
Butt Records, MGLS003
1984
Rock
NOTE: David Surkamp is a member of Pavlov's Dog.
Swamp Rats
Disco Sucks
Keystone Records, K111541-39
Recorded July 1966; released 1979
Garage rock
NOTE: This version was also on 45, St. Clair Records,
MF69. The timing is listed as (2:35) on the disc but is
really (3: 13).
Swingin' Medallions
Double Shot
Smash Records, SRS67083
1966
Rock
Tams
A Little More Soul
ABC Records, ABCS 627
Circa late 1960s
R&B
Tek, Denniz
Denniz Tek
Revenge Records, MIG 13
Recorded 1974; released 1989
rock
NOTE: Denniz Tek is guitarist for Radio Birdman. This
French import was recorded in Australia and mixed in
Texas.
233
LP
LP
(2:32)
Import
45
LP
(3:13)
LP
(2:44)
LP
(2:57)
Import
CD
(3:38)
23,q
Tempos, The
The Tempos
Crypt Records, 010
Recorded 1966; released 1987
39 Clocks
Subnarcotic
Psychotic Promotion Records, PS1-B
Circa 1980
New wave
NOTE: German import. This version was also on a British
import in 1983 on Flicknife Records, catalog number
Sharp109. This band contains former members of
Clock DVA.
Thunders, Johnny
In Cold Blood
New Rose Records, Rose 18
Recorded August 1982; released 1983
Punk
Tiger Moon
Vision Records, VR 1205
1988
Dance
NOTE: There are three mixes: Club mix (8:32), Doub-A-
Louie Mix (7:43), Urban Radio Mix (5:04)
Toots and the Maytals
Funky Kingston
Mango Records, MLPS 9330
1975
Reggae
NOTE: The timings listed on different printings of this
LP and CD vary considerably from each other and
reality. (One printing credits F. Hibbert with writing
"Louie Louie" and R. Berry for writing "Funky
Kingston.") The import CD on Trojan Records, TRLS
201, at (5:45) real time is the longest version.
Topics, The
Living Evidence
Topic Records, LP1001
Circa 1970s
Pop rock
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
Import
LP
(2:50)
Import
LP
(3:05)
12" single
(5:04)
LP
(4:25)
LP
(6: 16)
Troggs
From Nowhere
Page One Records, TL5355
1966
Rock
NOTE: This British import version is also on With a Girl
Like You, DJM Records, DJML047, 1975, a German
import LP Original Troggs, DJM 0044202, and a
French import LP the Very Best of the Troggs, Vogue
p.I.p. Records, 404520, 1980.
Tucker, Maureen
Playing Possum
Trash Records, TLP 1001
1982
Rock
NOTE: Maureen Tucker was drummer for the original
Velvet Underground.
Turner, Ike and Tina
Ike and Tina Turner's Greatest Hits, Volume 2
Saja Records, 91224-2
Recorded circa 1968; released 1988
R&B
NOTE: This version is also available on Best of Louie
Louie, Volume 2, Rhino Records, R1 70515.
Tyme Code Featuring Steve Sparling
Macola Records, MRC0949
1986
Dance
NOTE: There are two mixes: Short version (3:33)
Long version (5: 10)
The short version is included on Rhino Records Best of
Louie Louie, Volume 2 LP, R1 70515.
Underground All Stars
Extremely Heavy
Dot Records, DLP25964
Circa late 1960s
Psychedelic rock
NOTE: A Kim Fowley production.
USC Trojan Marching Band
Let the Games Begin
(There is no record label or catalog number.)
1984
Marching band
235
Import
LP
(3:00)
LP
(2:40)
LP
(2:45)
12" single
(3:33)
LP
(3:20)
LP
(1: 12)
236
Ventures, The
A Go-Go
Dolton Records, BST 8037
Circa 1965
Pop instrumental
Ventures, The
Play Guitar with the Ventures Guitar Phonics Volume 7
Liberty Records, LST 17507
Circa mid-1960s
Surf-instructional
Viceroys, The
At Granny's Pad
Bolo Records, BLP 8000
1963
1960s cover band
Wailers, The
The Wailers and Company
Etiquette Records
Circa early 1960s
Northwest R&B
NOTE: Re-issued as Imperial Records, LP9262, Tall Cool
One.
Wammack, Travis
Atlantic Records, 45-2322
1966
Fuzz guitar instrumental
NOTE: This version is on a British CD, Scr-Scr-Scratchy,
Zuzazz Records, Z2010, 1989; and a French import
LP, Formidable Rhythm N Blues, Atlantic 40254.
Whitcomb, Ian
Sock Me Some Rock
Tower Records, ST 5100
Circa 1967
Pop jazz
NOTE: This version was shortened, overdubbed with
crowd noise, and issued as a 45 by "Sir Arthur," Tower
216. This 45 edit was subsequently issued on Ian
Whitcomb's Instrumentals LP, First American
Records, FA 7751, in 1980.
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:10)
LP
LP
(1:04)
LP
(2:32)
45
(2:03)
LP
(4:44)
White, Barry
Beware
Unlimited Gold Records, FZ 37176
1981
Easy soul
NOTE: A shortened edit (3:35) was issued as a 7" 45, ZS5
02425, and a 12" promo-only single was issued
concurrently with the LP.
Wig, The
Live at the Jade Room
Texas Archive Records, TAR 3
Recorded 1966; released 1983
Rock
Wilson, Ron and the Surfaris
Lost It in the Suif
Bennett House Records, BHR 116
Recorded 1985; released 1986
Scottish surf
NOTE: Ron Wilson sang vocals and pounded on a
Scottish ceremonial drum, accompanied by Sean
Fulsom playing bagpipes.
Winter, Johnny and Friends
A Lone Star Kind of Day
Relix Records, RRCD 2042
1990
Boogie rock
XL 5 Minus 1
"Booga Louie"
Cove Records, 101
Circa 1967
Young and Restless
Something to Get You Hyped
Pandisc Records, PD-8809
1990
Rap
NOTE: "Louie Louie" credited to the group, with no
mention of Richard Berry.
Young and Restless
Coupe de Ville (soundtrack)
Cypress Records, LP 71334
1990
237
LP
(7:14)
LP
Cassette
CD
(3:24)
45
CD
(5:07)
LP
(several)
238
Rap
NOTE: The four mixes below also appear on the Cypress
LP "Coupe de Ville," 74500.
The four mixes: "Louie Rap"
Zappa, Frank
Uncle Meat
"Louie Vocal Attack"
"Louie Louie House Mix"
"Louie de Palma Mix"
Bizarre/Reprise Records, 2MS2024
1968
Orchestral aside
(3:38)
(3:45)
(3:38)
(0:57)
~ O T E : The version is entitled "Louie Louie at the Royal
Albert Hall in London." There are no composer
credits on the LP, but Richard Berry is credited on the
CD (Rykodisc 10064-65). An actual performance of
"Louie Louie" is on the Unmitigated Audacity bootleg
LP, GLC Records, D549, 1981.
LOUIE LOUiE
LP
(2:28)
Abbot, Gary, 111
Abbott, Keith, 69
Adams, Dorothy, 37
"Ain't That Love," 173
Aladdin, 15
Alice in Chains, 204
"All Day and All of the
Night," 143
Allemang, Ross, 93
Allen, Steve, 56
"AlleyOop," 56
AMC,172
"i\merican Bandstand," 90,
92
American Berry Music, 1,
196
"Angel of My Life," 30
"Angel of the Morning,"
149
Angels, 144
Animal House, 145, 162,
163,165,171
Animals, 146, 152
Annabella, 167
"Annie" 28
"Annie'Fannie," 88
Apple, 152
April-Blackwood, 149, 150
Apson, Los, 148
"Are You a Boy or Are You a
Girl," 146
Arlen, Harold, 32
Armo Music, 27
Annstrong, Louis, 51
Artists Rights, 194, 196,
197, 198
Ashby, Irving, 33
Asheton, Ronald Frank,
159, 160
Asheton, Scott, 159
Astaire, Fred, 32
Atlantic Records, 25, 194
Australian Crawl, 147
"Baby, That Was
Rock'n'Roll," 2+
Baker, James, 28
Baker, LaVern, 28
Ballard, Hank, 27, 50, 90,
118
and the Midnighters, 50,
64
Bangs, Lester, 102-3, 145
Bank Records, 113
Barbarians, 146
Barnes, George, 169
Barnum, H, B., 173
Barretto, Ray, 31
Bay State Distributors, 107,
109
Beach Boys, 14,52,59,109,
123,144,170,171
Beatles, 52, 59, 64, 70, 74,
96, 101, 108, 124, 140,
144,152,177
"Beatnik Sticks," 91, 92
Beau Brummels, 147, 184
Beck, Jeff, 152
Behind the Hits, 150
Belushi, John, 45, 162, 163,
165, 166
Belvin, Jesse, 14, 17-19,21,
168,173,198
"Be Mine" 16
"Be My B ~ b y , " 105
Bennett, Richard, 197
Bernal, Gil, 24
Berns, Bert, 113, 180
Berry, Chuck, 11,26,31,32,
59,61
Berry, Dorothy, 37,148,172
Berry, Richard, 10, 11, 12-
14, 16-40, 42, 45-
46,54,57,61,66,68,
74,76,79,94,118,119,
122,130,140,141,
142,143,144,148,152,
158,168, 169, 172-77,
180-2,184,192,201,
202
and the Soul Serchers,
175
Best of'Louie Louie', 41, 44,
186, 196
Best of the Kingsmen, 103
239
"Be True to Your School,"
123
Beware, 168
"Beware" 168
Big Bopper, 59
"Big Boy Pete," 81, 101,
112,178
"Big Break," 26
B' Chill, 7
B:fari, Joe, 18,21,25,29,
33,34,37,39,44
Bihari, Jules, 18, 21, 33, 34,
37,44
Bihari, Saul, 18, 21, 33, 34,
37,44
Blackboard Jungle, 115
Black Flag, 166
Blackwell, Bumps, 50, 51
Blaine, Hal, 105
Bland, Bobby, 46
Blecha, Peter, 103, 110
Bloodclots, 165, 184
Bloom, Allan, 4
Blossoms, 194
"Blue Moon," 59
Blues Brothers, 164
Blues Magoos, 145
BMI, 29, 40, 42, 43, 196,
197
Bobby Fuller Four, 145
"Bodies," 166
Bold Soul, 172
Bolster, Ken, 99, 100
Booker T. and the MGs, 87,
196
"Book of Love," 178
Boone, Pat, 64, 148
Bottiger, Ted, 192
Bowl of Slugs, 184
Bow Wow Wo';", 167
Boy George, 5, 167
"Bov Next Door," 109
Bradford, Alex, 16
Briggs, Willie, 175
"Brother Louie," 152-54
Brothers Four, 93
Brown, Charles, 16, 21
Brown, Errol, 152, 154
Brown, James, 61. 95
Brown, Michael, 153
Brown, Rabbit, 24
Brown, Roy, 16
Brunvand, Jan Harold, 115
BT Express, 58
Buckley, Tim, 157
Bumble, B. and the Stingers,
92
Butera, Sam, 26
"Bye Bye." 26
Cadets, 15,21,26,29. See
also Jacks
Cadillac, Junior, 192
California Cooler, 195, 196
Callender, Red. 33
Calloway, Cab, 51
"Calypso Blues" 33
Cannibal and the Head-
hunters. 146
"Can't Get Enough of Your
Love, Baby," 168
Capital Records, 108
Cash. 20
Cashbox, 68, 123
"Castles Made of Sand," 69.
151
"Casual Look. A," 30, 38
"Cathy's Clown," 56
Challengers, 147
Chambers Brothers, 184
Chandler, Gene, 81, 86, 101
Chantry. Art, 69
Chapman, Reid, 124-25.
126
Charles, Ray, 16,37,51,52,
103, 142, 173, 174
"Charlie Brown" 25
Chase, Ken. 87":'88, 96, 97,
98,109,111,112,131
Checker, Chubby, 64
Checkers, 59
Checkmates, Ltd., 147
Cheplowitz. Mel, 183
"Cherrie Pie" 23
Cherry, Don,' 16
Chimes, 22
Christian, Charlie, 31
Christmas, 71
Christopher. Jordan. 149,
150
and the Wild Ones. 149
Chudd, Lew, 30
Clark, Dee, 86, 101
Clark, Dick. 61, 64, 65, 70,
89
Clark, Doug. and the
Hotnuts, 146
Clarke, Stanlev, 170
Clash. 165, 166
Class, 15, 29
Clay. Andrew Dice, 5
Cleveland, James, 16
Cliques, 18
Clothes, Todd, 36
Clovers, 90
Coasters, 21, 25, 26, 194
Coates, Dorothy Love, 16
Cobain, Kurt, 205
Cocker, Joe, 163
"Cock in My Pocket," 159
Cohen, Stanley, 115
Colbert, Godoy, 30
Cole, Nat King, 16, 33
Collins, Billy, 175
Collins, Noel, 30
Columbia Records, 99, 108
"Come Softly to Me," 56
Comets, 90
Command Performance, 145
Commercial Recorders, 65
Como, Perry. 44
Connick, Harry, Jr., 4
Connick, Harry, Sr., 4
Contours. 74
Cooke, Sam, 18
"Cop Killer." 203
Coryell, Larry. 52. 59
Count Five, 146
Coupe de Ville, 7-10
Courtmen, 112
Cramer, Flovd, 147
Craven, Michael, 187
Crawford, Brother J. C., 158
Crayton, Pee Wee, 22
"Crazy Lover," 26
Criss, Cherry, 17
Criss, Dolphy, 17
Criss, Farmer, 17
Criss, Sonny, 17
Crowns, 27
Crystals. 194
CU'lture Club. 167
Curtis, Barry. 111, 179
"Da Doo Ron Ron," 59
Dale and Grace, 123
Dalley, Robert, 83
Daltrey, Roger, 144
Dance Halls, Teen Fairs and
Armories, 65
Dangel, Rich, 66, 68, 70, 72,
97
Darin, Bobby, 50
"David's Mood." 51
Davies. Ray, 143
Davis, Helen, 192
Davis. Jimmie, 34
Davis, Maxwell, 14,21,22,
29,36
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 174
Dawson, Jim, 17. 19
Day, Doris, 100
"Death of an Angel," 24.
30,46,113,178
Debbie and the Panty Lines,
184
DeBella, John, 186-90
Debonairs, 20
Del' arnatt, Arlie, 192
De p. Brad, 155
Deltas, 162
Dennon, Jerry, 98, 99, 107-
9, 131, 135, 193
Dick James Music, 150
Diddley, Bo, 65
Dirt, Phil, 183
"Dirty Robber," 65
"Dirty Water," 146
Disco Twits, 184
Dixon, Floyd, 21
Dixon, Luther, 108
"Does Your Chewing Gum
Lose Its Flavor on the
Bedpost Overnight?,"
107
"Do It ('Til You're Satis-
fied)," 58
Dolphin, John, 18,20-21,
22
Dolphin/Dolton, 64. 66
Dolphy, Eric, 16
"Dominique," 123, 124
Domino, Fats, 15. 26, 30,
64,119
Don and Dewey, 15
Don and the Goodtimes.
179
Donegan, Lonnie, 107
DonnaiDel-Fi Records, 56
Donovan, 152
"Don't Believe in Christ-
mas," 71
Dootone, 15
"Double Shot," 145
Downbeats. 91
"Down Here on the
Ground," 175
"Do You Love Me," 59
Dreamers, 26
Drifters, 194
Duke, George, 170
"Duke of EarL" 59
Dunlap, Jim, ~ n d the
Horsemen, 87
Durr, Dorothy, 175
Dvlan, Bob, 71,141
DYnamics, 59
"Earth Angel," 18, 23, 30
Easton, Lynn, 81-88, 94,
97,98,100,103,105,
111,117,122.137,140,
141,179
Eddy, Duane, 88
"Ed Sullivan Show," 85
El-Chords,118
Elektra Records, 179
"El Loco Cha Cha," 13,31,
33, 147
"El Watusi." 31
Ely, Jack, 81-88, 95, 97, 98,
100,102,104,110,111,
112, 122, 130, 136,
180,184,193,198,201
Ely, Ken, 85
Emerson, Lake, and
Palmerisms, 92
"Emma," 152
Empire, 29
Engelhart, Little Bill, and
the Bluenotes, 47-50,
51,53-55,56,57,
58,61,64,66
Entertainment Machine, 75
Enrnistle, John, 144
Epic Records, 155
Era, 177
Ermines, 26
Etiquette Records, 66, 70,
71
"Every l's a Winner," 152
"Express," 58
Fabulous Wailers Live at the
Cw;tle, 70, 74
Faggen, Gil, 124-25
Farmer, Art, 16
"Farmer John," 145, 146
Fat Boys, 170-71
Feirtag, Max, 15, 30, 33, 35,
37,42,44,45,98,117,
122, 126, 131, 137, 148,
168,173,193,195
Fellers, Rocky, 109
"Fever" 50
Finley: Larry, 25
Finn, 133
First Thing Coming, 69
5 Hearts, 22
5 Royales, 23
Flairs, 14, 15, 16,21-26,
30,37,54
Flaming Caucasians, 188
Flamingos, 20, 23
Fleetwoods, 56, 64
Flippers, 147
Flip Records, 15, 30, 33, 34,
42,68,98,137,172,
177,178
"Fog Cutter," 57
Foos, Richard, 42
Foreigner, 188
Forrest, Jimmy, 95
Fountain, Pete, 147
Four Seasons, 59
Fowley, Kim, 92
Fox, Pete, 20, 26, 30
Foxx, Redd, 146
"Framed" 25
Francia, Johnny, 57
Frantics, 57, 58, 61, 66,71,
74
Frazier, Thurston, 19
Freberg, Stan, 56
Fred, John, and His Playboy
Band, 146
Freed, Alan, 15,43,59
Freeman, Ernie, 33, 42
Fright Night 2, 197
"F --- Tha Police," 203
Fulson, Lowell, 50
Funhouse, 158
Funky Kingston, 148
"Funny," 18
Gallucci, Don, 81, 86-87,
92,98,103,179
Gants, 146
"Garageland," 166
Gardena Records, 92
Gene & Eunice, 44
Gentrys, 146
Gibbs, Georgia, 27, 43
Gillet, Charlie, 102
"Gimme Some Lovin' " 196
Ginsberg, Allen, 24 '
Ginsburg, Arnie, 106-7,
110, 183
"Girl of My Dreams," 18
"Girl Who Stopped the
Duke of Earl," 173
"Give Her All the Love I've
Got" 175
"Give P ~ a c e a Chance," 152
Glass, Phillip, 5
Glenn, Jim "Jimbo," 170
"Gloria" 27 146 151
GNP, 15 ' ,
"Go Awav Little Girl," 110
Golden Crest, 64, 65
"Golden Teardrops," 23
Goldman, Albert, 4
Goldmark, Goldie, 31
Goldmine, 65, 83, 95
"Goodnight My Love," 18
"Good Rockin Daddy," 16,
28
Gordon, Dexter, 16
Gordon, Rosco, 21
Gordy, Berry, 59,74
Gore, Tipper, 4
Grace, Robert J., 131, 135,
138
Graham, Bill, 70
Gramm, Lou, 188
Granahan, Gerry, 149
Grant, Amy, 122
Greek, John, 62, 65
Greenberg, Florence, 108,
136
"Green Onions," 59, 87,
196
Grendysa, Peter, 119
"Guantanamera," 147
Gubow,Lawrence,134
Guess vVho, 18, 109
Gunter, Cornelius, 20
Gunter, Cornell, 26
Guss, John, 91, 92, 95
Hackett, Buddy, 184
Hagar, Sammy, 202
Haley, Bill, 31, 90,115
Hamilton, Chico, 17
Hancock, Hunter, 15, 35-
38, 198
Hansen, Randy, 184
Haris, Gail, 61, 62
Harris, Robert, 30
Harris, Wynonie, 15-16
Harrison, George, 124
Harrison, Wilbert, 147
Hart, Roger, 89, 93, 94, 96,
98,99,110,174
Hasil,172
Hatfield and the North, 169
"Haunted Castle" 98 >
"Havana Moon,'! 32, 33
"Have Love, Will Travel,"
70,39,142,174
"Have You Seen Your
Mother, Baby, Standing
in the Shadows," 146
Hawkins, Jennell, 27, 30,
172
Hawkins, Screamin' Jay, 31
"Heat vVave," 59
Hedgecock, Roger, 169
Henderson, Stanley, 30
Hendrix, Jimi, 47, 53, 59,
69, 151-52
"Henry," 28
Hensen, Gary, 175
Here Are the Sanies, 142
Hermans's Hermits, 152
"He's a Rebel," 194
"He's So Fine" 59
"Hey, Henry,'" 16,28
"Hey Joe," 183
Hibberts, Toots, 148
"Hi-Heel Sneakers," 146
Hirt, AI, 52
"Hit the Road, Jack," 59
Hodge, Alex, 20
Hodge, Gaynel, 19, 20
Holden, Dave, 55
Holden, Oscar, 50, 51, 55
Holden, Ron, 51, 55-61, 66,
80, 122
and the Playboys, 55, 57
Holly, Buddy, 48, 59, 61, 81
Hollywood Blue Jays, 20
Hollywood Flames, 19
Hollywood Recorders, 33
"Honeydripper," 17
"Honey Love," 50
Hooker, John Lee, 21
Hopkins, Lightnin', 21
Horne, Lena, 32
Hot Chocolate, 152
"Hound Dog," 24, 25
242
Houston, Whitney, 170
Hover, H. 0.,174
Howlers, 22
Howlin' Wolf, 15
"Huggy Boy," 15,20
Hynde, Chrissie, and the
Pretenders, 166
Ian, Janis, 153
"I Can't E lain" 144
Ice Cube, gE, 202, 203
Ice-T, 25, 202, 203
"I Had a Love," 21, 22
"I Love an Angel" 56 57
61 '"
"I'm a Man," 146
"I'm Gonna Love You Just a
Little More, Baby," 168
"I'm Leaving It Up to You,"
123
Imperial Chief, 15
Imperial Records, 30
"I'm Ready," 26
"I'm Still in Love with You,"
22,26
"I'm Wild About That
Thing," 119
"I Need You" 144
"In My 109
"In the Midnight Hour,"
146
"I Put a Spell on You," 31
"I Saw Her Standing
There" 96
Island 148
Isley Brothers, 142
"It's Ecstasy When You Lay
Down Next to Me," 168
"It Will Stand" 45
Ivy, Percy, 220'
"I Wanna Be Your Dog,"
159
"I Wanna Testify," 146
"I Want to Hold Your
Hand," 124, 140
"I Want You Back," 96
Jack, Wolfman, 15
Jacks, 23, 26. See also
Cadets
Jackson, Chuck, 108, 175
Jackson, Jesse, 5
Jackson 5, 96
Jacquet, Illinois, 51
"Jailhouse Rap," 170
"Jailhouse Rock" 25
"J.A.J.," 51 '
"James Alley Blues," 24
James, Elmore, 21
James, Etta, 14, 16,21,27,
43-44
Jan and Dean, 145
Javna, John, 150
Jazz on a Summer's Day,
143
Jefferson Airplane, 148
Jefferson, Joe, 20
Jefferson, John, 20
"Jenny Lee," 145
Jerden, 98, 100, 107, 108
Jessie, Obie "Young," 20, 22
John, Little Willie, 50, 53
Johnson, Ron, 150
"Jolly Green Giant," 112,
113,178
Jones, Gloria, 30, 33
Jones, Quincy, 51, 52, 53
Jones, Ricky Lee, 15
Jordan, Louis, 31, 33, 51
"Judy in Disguise," 146
"Juke Box Jury," 25
Kalvert, Scott, 171
Kama Sutra Records, 153
K&G,172
Kansas, 154
"Kansas City" 59 147
Kapralik, Da-rid, 1'00
Keen, Bob, 56
"Keep On Dancing," 146
Kelton, Frank, 27
Kennedy, John, 140
Kenny G., 51, 53
Kerner, Kenny, 153
"Killer Joe" 109
King, B. B.: 21, 49, 50
King, Carole, 153
"King Creole," 25
Kingsmen on Campus, 141
Kingsmen in Person, Featur-
ing "Louie Louie," 111
Kingsmen Trio, 10, 11,31,
35,68,74,76,78,79,
81-89,93,94,97,
98,99,100,101,107,
108, 109, 110, 113, 117,
119,120, 122,123, 124,
126, 127, 128, 131, 136,
137,141,142,144,
148, 149, 153, 162, 165,
166,177-180,184,
193, 196, 198
Kinkdom, 144
Kinks, 143, 144
Kink-Size, 144
"Ko Ko Mo," 44
"La Bamba " 145
Laboe, Art, '61
La Juive, 31
Lamarr, Hedy, 140
Lancaster-Barker, Lisa, 65,
72
Landis, John, 162
"Land of 1 000 Dances "
146 ' ,
"Last Kiss," 56
"Last 'Louie Louie'," 148
Latin Rascals, 170
Lawrence, Steve, 110
Led Zeppelin, 155
Left Banke, 153
Leiber, Jerry, 15,21,24-25,
26,33,67
Lemmings, 163
Lennon, John, 101, 124,
152,202
Letterman, David, 141, 169
Levin, Drake, 174
Levinson, Bob, 106-7, 109
Levy, Morris, 194
Lewis, Dave, 51, 53
and the Dynamics, 52
Lewis, Jerry Lee, 15, 59, 90
Liberty Records, 56, 68, 71
Liggins, Joe, 16, 17
"Like Long Hair" 92
Music, 1, 39, 44,
117,126,129,137,195,
196
Lindahl, Bob, 95, 97
Lindsay, Mark, 89, 91,110,
122,174
Lipstick Traces, 79
Little Esther, 15
"Little Green Thing," 51
"Little Latin Lupe Lu," 146
Little Richard, 14, 15, 26,
52,59,65,67,81,118,
196
and the Upsetters, 50
Lloyd, Ian, 153, 154
"Loco-Motions" 59
Lois Music, 27'
London, Julie, 147, 149
Look at the Fool, 157
"Louie Go Home" 113
142,174 ' ,
"Louie Louie '66," 113
Louie &port, 115
"Louis 167
Love, Darlene, 194
"Love Me Girl," 26
"Love You So "51 55 56
57,61 ' , , ,
"Lucille" 65
Luft, 183
Lulu, 152
Lymon, Frankie, and the
Teenagers, 194
Lynn, Loretta, 49, 52
Mabon, Willie, 24
"Mad About You" 26
Madonna,5 '
Magnum, 36
Manson, Charles, 100
Marcus, Greil, 78, 79, 143
Margolis, Chuck, 55
Marsalis, Wynton, 4
Martindale, Wink, 92
Martinez, Ray, 33
Marvin and Johnny, 21, 23
Marx, Richard, 14
"Mary Lou," 22, 26
Master Recorders, 21
"Man Mau," 57, 61, 65
"Maximum 'Louie Louie',"
183
May, Joe, 16
"Mavbelline " 26
Lee, 27, 30
MaYfield, Percv, 16
MC5, 132, 133, 158, 165
McCallum, David, 147, 184
McCartney, Paul, 96, 101,
124
McKuen, Rod, 149
McLaren, Malcolm, 167
McNeely, Jay, 17
McPhatter, Clyde, 50
Melcher, Terry, 100
"Memories of El Monte,"
37
Mercer, Johnny, 32
Merilee,61
Mermaids, 124
Messengers, 147
Metallic KO, 159, 165, 179
M:yer, Augie, 140
Yhlburn, Amos, 16
"Milk Cow Blues Boogie,"
96
Milton, Roy, 16
"Mind Disaster," 71
Mineo, Art, 65
Mingus, Charles, 16
"Miss Molly," 118
Mitchell, Mike, 81, 86, 97,
108, 137, 178, 179
Mitchell, Willie, 147
Modern Records, 14, 15, 18,
21,25,28,37,43
"Moments," 30
"Moments to Remember,"
172
Monarch Records, 37
"Money," 74,88,112
Monotones, 178
"Mony Mony," 141
Moon, Keith, 104, 105, 144
Moore, Johnny, 16, 21
Morales, Mark, 170
"More Than a Feeling," 155
Morrill, Kent, 65, 66, 70,
72,82
Morrison, Van, 151
Morris, William, 111, 112
Most, Mickie, 152
Mothers ofInvention, 78
Motola, George, 29
Moussorgsky, 5
"Mr, Blue," 56
Muddy Waters, 24, 26, 49
Music Machine, 145
.SallJ:'," 146."
"My Bo nend's Back,
14 -45
"My Generation," 144, 152
Mystery Train, 78
Naked Gun, 197
Nashville Teens, 146
National Lampoon, 163
Negativland, 31
Nelson, Larry, 55
Nelson, Mary, 55
Nelson, Sandy, 147
Never Mind the Bollocks,
Here's the Sex Pistols,
166
"Never Never Gonna Give
You Up," 168
New, Leroy K., 127
Newman, Randy, 14
New Musical Express
(N.M.E.), 142
New York Dolls, 165, 169
"Next Time" 26
"Kight 95, 100
"19th Nervous Breakdown,"
146
"96 Tears" 146
Nirvana, 71, 103,204-7
Nite Owl, 55
"No Kissin' and Huggin',"
34
"No Matter What Shape
Your Stomach's
In," 178
Nordby, Bob, 81, 86, 88
Norman, Gene, 15,22
"No Room "38
Northwest Recorders, 95, 97
Kunn, Bobby, 24, 26
"Nut Rocker," 92
K,WA, 25, 202, 203
Okeh,31
Oliver, Carson, 175
Olympics, 81, 112, 178
"One for My Baby," 32
"One Little Prayer," 22
"Only the Lonely," 59
Orbison, Rov, 72
Original Harmo-
nettes, 16
Original Trendsetters, 169
Ormsby, Buck, 47-50, 53-
55,58,61,62,63,65,
66,68,70,71,80,
84,122,140,146,191,
192
Otis, Johnny, 15, 16,27,37
"Out of Mv Tree," 71
Owens, BU'ck, 52
Pain in My Heart, 145
Palmer, Earl, 15
Palmer, Robert, 24
PAM Records, 172, 175
Parker, Junior, 46, 50
Parliament, 146
"Party Lights," 59
Patty Smith Group, 165, 184
"Paul Revere's Ride," 92
Pavlov's Dog, 169
Paxley,l72
Peaches, 27
Pearl Jam, 204
Peel, David, 184
Pelzel, "Doc," 75, 182-86
Penguins, 18, 20, 23
"Peppermint Stick," 118
Perez, Ralph, 12
"Peter Gunn Rock" 88
Peterson, Dick, 11 1, 177,
179
Pharoahs, 30, 33, 35, 42, 66,
146,177
Phillips, Sam, 15
Pickett, Wilson, 146
"Pipeline," 183
Platters, 20
PlaJing Possum, 169
Pop, Iggy, 158
and the Stooges, 158, 159,
165, 179
"Popsicles and Icicles," 124
Potlatch, 79-80
Potter, Peter, 25
Predoehl, Eric, 115, 162
Premiers, 146
Presley, Elvis, 15, 25, 56, 59,
84,85,96,105,148
Presley, Reg, 150
Pretenders II, 166
Price, Lloyd, 15
Prima, Louis, 26
Priority Records, 203
"Problem" 158
" 166
Propes, 16,20,21,
22,27,29,39,46,55,
173
"Psychotic Reaction," 146
"Purple Haze," 151, 152,
201
Quadrophenia, 143
"Quarter to Three," 59
Quatro, Suzi, 152
? and the Mysterians, 146
Raelette, 37
"Raindrops," 101
Rainey, Ma, 119
RAK Records, 152
Ramones, 165
Rams, 22
Rare Earth, 147
Ravens, 23
Raw Power, 158
Ray, Robert B., 77
Reagan, Ronald, 5
"Real Frank Zappa Book,"
4
"Reconsider, Baby," 50
Recorded in Hollywood, 18,
20, 22
Record Mirror, 142
Redding, Otis, 145
Reisdorff, Bob, 66
Remains, 146
"Remote Control," 166
Rene, Leon, 15, 29
Revere, Paul, 89, 98, 99
and the Raiders, 89-101,
108,109,110,113,117,
138,142,174,179
Rhino Records, 41, 42, 44,
103
Rhythm and Blues, 21, 36
Rhythm Rockers, 31, 32
Richard, Keith, 11
"Rich Bitch," 159
Richman, 184
Ricky and Jennell, 27
Riddle, Nelson, 32
"Ride Ride Baby," 113
Riedle, Jeff, 182-86
R!ghteous 94,. 146
Rlllera, Bar!}, 12-14,32,
57, 140, 146
Rillera, Bobby, 12-14,32,
57,140,146
Rillera, Ricky, and the
Rhythm Rockers, 11
"Riot in Cell Block #9," 14,
24,25,26,202
"Roadrunner" 65 146
Roberts, Robin, 14,
24-26,48,54-55,61,
62,66-70,67,68,
70,72,73,74,79,80,
82,84,94,122,131,
140, 149, 152, 154, 167,
192,198,201
Robinson, Damon "Kool
Rock-ski," 170
Robyn, Abe "Bunny," 15, 21
"Rock, Rock, Rock," 177
Rock Action, 159, 160
"Rock Around the Clock,"
115
Rocket, 69
Rocking Kings, 59
"Rockin' Man" 26
Rock of Ages, 76
Roddam, Frank, 143
Rogers, Dan, 65
Rolling Stone Illustrated
History of Rock &: Roll,
103,154
Rolling Stones, 31-34, 140,
146
Rollins, Henry, 166
"Roll with Me, Henry," 27
Rolontz, Bob, 21, 22
Roman Wheels, 62
Roth, Joe, 7, 10
Rotten, Johnny, 205
Roulette Records, 194
RPM, 18, 15,21,24
Rubin, Chuck, 194, 197
Ruffin, Jimmy, 175
Ruhlmann, William, 89, 93,
95, 110
"Run Joe," 33
Rupe, Art, 18,37
Rush, Merrilee, 149
Ryder, Mitch,
"and the Detroit Wheels,
146
Sahm, Doug, 140
Sam and Daye, 194
Sam the Sham and the
Pharoahs, 146
Sande, 95, 98, 99
Sandpipers, 147, 149
Santamaria, Mongo, 147
"Satisfaction," 11, 183
"Saturday Night Live," 166
Scepter/VVand Records,
108-9, 125, 126, 132.
See also Wand Records
Schlachter, Marv, 108-9,
126, 133
Scholz, Tom, 154-55
"Scotch on the Rocks," 65
"Search and Destroy," 159
Secrets, 109
Seeger, Pete, 130
"See See Rider" 119
"Set 'Em Up 32
"17"166 ' ,
Doc, 169
Sex Pistols, 165, 166, 167
Shadows of Knights, 146
Shaffer, Paul, 169
"Shaking AllOver," 109
"Shanghaied," 71
Shannon, Bob, 150
"ShBoom" 5
"She You," 140
"She's About a Mover," 146
"She vVants to Rock," 16,
21 22
Shield;, 18
Shindig, 136, 140, 141, 146
Shirelles, 108
Shirley and Lee, 27
"Shout" 59 142
Showln'en, 45
Sill, Lester, 24
"Since I Lost My Baby," 7
"Sincerely," 43
Singing Nun, 123
Sir Douglas Quintet, 140,
146
Sir Mixalot, 53
Six Teens, 30, 38
Sky's the Limit, 32
Smash, 172
"Smells Like Teen Spirit,"
71,204-7
Smith, Bessie, 119
Smith, Mike "Smitty," 92,
96
Smith, O. C., 17
"Smokey Joe's Cafe," 25
"Society's Child," 153
"Sock It to Me," 146
"So Fine," 18
"Somewhere There's a
Rainbow," 33
Sonies, 39, 53, 70, 71, 147,
165
Soul Stirrers, 16
"Soul Train," 168, 169
Soundgarden, 53, 204
"Spanish Castle Magic," 69,
151
Spark Records, 24
Specialty Records, 15, 16,
18,37,50
Spector, Phil, 25, 105, 194
Spector, Ronnie, 105
Spencer Davis Group, 196
"Splish Splash," 50
"Spread Your Love," 175
Springsteen, Bruce, 39, 169
"Stagger Lee," 59
Stallone, Sylvester, 5
Standells, 146
Starr, Ringo, 124
"Stay," 59
Stengel, Casey, 59
Stierman, Vern, 126
Stokes, Geoffry, 76-77, 79
Stoller, Mike, 15,21,24-25,
26,33,67
Stompers, 62
Stooges, 158, 159, 165
Stories, 153-54
"Straight Flush," 5 7
Straight Outta Compton,
203
"Stranded in the Jungle,"
26
Stranglers, 170
Strong, Barrett, 112
"Strychnine," 71
"Stuck on You," 56
"Submission," 166
"Sugar Sugar" 141
111, 179
Sun Records, 15
"Surfing Bird," 124
"Surfin' U.S.A.," 59
Swaggart, Jimmy, 105
Swallows, 23
"Sweet Sugar You," 33
Swingin' , 36
2q5
Swingin' Medallions, 145, "Tweedle Dee," 28 West, Steve, 93
146 "25 Players! 1 guitar!," 166 "VVhat'd I SfA" 59 103 142
"Twist," 64, 170, 171 "Where the 89,
"Take the Key," 34 "Twist and Shout," 113 179
"Talk Back Trembling 2 Live Crew, 122, 141 White, Barry, 168, 169, 170,
L*s," 109
Tympani Five, 33 176
"Talk alk," 145 VVho,94, 104, 143, 144, 155
"Tall Cool One," 57, 61, 63, H2,31 "VVhole Lot-ta Shakin'
65 Goin' On," 90
Talmy, Shel, 143, 144
Valens, Ritchie, 59, 61 "VVhy Do Fools Fall in
T.A.M.l. Show, 145
Valjo Music, 27
Love?," 194
Tams, 147
Vance, Kenny, 165
"Why Don't You Write Me."
Taylor, Billy, 51, 52
109
23,26
Taylor, Chip, 149, 150
Velvet Underground. 169
"Wild Berry," 175
T-Bones,178
Ventures, 53, 57
Wild Berry! Live From H. D.
Teen Queens, 21
Vinson, Fred :vI., Jr., 135
Hover's CentuIY . .. ,
"Tell Me You Love Me," 21,
Vinton, Bobby, 124
175
22
Visible Language, 77
"Wild Thing," 104, 149,
Temptations, 7
Vulgar Boatmen, 77
150, 151, 196
"That's VVhat the Good Willard, Maxine, 175
Book Says," 24
Wailers, 53, 56, 57, 58, 61,
Williams, Al, 191
"There. I've Said It Again,"
62,63,64,65,66,68,
Williams, Curtiss, 20
124
69, 70, 71, 72, 73,
Williamson, James, 159,
Thomas, Rufus, 118, 123
74,81,89,94,143,144,
160
Thompson, Beverly, 20
151, 165
Wilson, 1. Frank, 56
Thornton, Big Mama, 24, 26
"VValk Away, Renee," 153
Wilson. Jackie, 140
Three Blazers, 21
"Walk Don't Run," 5 7
Wilson, Phillips, 14
"Three O'Clock Blues," 50
Walker, Dick, 93
Wilson, Tony, 152
Thunderbirds. 55
Walker, T-Bone, 16,31
Wimbl
6
, Damon, 170
Thunders, Johnny, 169
"Walking the Dog," 123
"Wipe ut," 59
Thurston, Scott, 159, 160
"vVallflower," 14, 16, 27, 28,
Wise, Richie, 153
Tillman, Julia, 175
31,43
Witherspoon, Jimmy, 21
Tillotson, Johnny, 109
Wall Street Journal, 75, 185
Wonder, Stevie, 154
Til, Sonny, and the Orioles,
Wammack, Travis, 147
Woods, Donald, 24. 30, 113,
23
"Wanda Lu," 157
178
Tiny Tony and the Statics,
"Wanderer." 59
"Wooly Bully," 5,146
61
Wand Records, 108, 109,
"vVork with Me, Annie," 27.
"Tobacco Road," 146
110, 122, 126, 127, 128,
50,118
Toles, Billy, 51
129, 131, 132, 133,
Toll, Robert C., 75
135,136,178,193. See
"Yakety Yak," 25
Tolson. Clyde, 134
also ScepterlWand
"Yama Yama Pretty Mama,"
Toots and the Maytals, 148
Records
26,30
Toussaint, Allen, 147
Waple, Ben F., 128
Yardbirds, 146
Touzet, Rene, 13, 31, 122, Yes, 154
136, 143
Ward, Carlos, 57
"Yesterday," 183
Townshend, Peter, 143, 144,
Warhol, Andrew, 5
"Yesterday and You," 109
154
Warners, 56
"You Are My Sunshine," 33,
Tracy, Ben, 94
Warrant, 14
34,37
Trammell, Charles, 20, 22
Warren, Rusty, 146
"You Can't Catch Me," 32
Trashman, 124
Warwick, Dionne, 108
"You Cheated," 18
Trash Records, 169
Waters, Muddy, 14
"Young Blood," 25
Travelers, Pilgrim, 16
Watson, Johnny "Guitar,"
Young Jessie, 26
Triad, 154
21
"You Really Got Me," 143
Trogf,s, 149, 150
"We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet,"
"You're the First, the
"Tru y," 16
145
Last, My Everything,"
Tucker, Maureen, 169
"We Gotta Get Out of This
168
Tucker, Tommy, 146
Place," 146
"You SeJi.-y Thing," 152
Turks. 20
Weiner, Russell, 154
Turnabouts, 61,149 Wells, Ed, 38
Zappa, Frank, 4, 37, 142,
Turner, Ike, 15, 21, 145 Welsh, Matthew K., 124-25, 154,201
Turner, Tina, 145 126, 128
Zeirr, Hal, 37
"Tutti Frutti," 196 "Werewolf," 5 7 Zuc er, Imin, 92
1 Engineer Lindahl begs to differ. In a letter he wrote after
reading the hardcover edition of this book, he spelled out the
equipment he used, from the Ampex 300 tape deck to the EMT
120 and EMT 140 echo plates, concluding, "Where in the na-
tion in 1963 was a studio less primitive?" Since the Raiders had
no similar problems, a red-faced author can but reply, "Touche."
2 According to engineer Lindahl, the real problem was where
Jack insisted on standing relative to the rest of the band, which
necessitated using a boom microphone. "The active element of
the microphone was no more than three inches from the corner
of his mouth. In typical studio fashion the microphone was
placed grille and pick-up element down. A [Neumann] U47 is
quite long; perhaps Ely did not understand that he was picked
up from behind the protective grille and he chose to sing to the
nameplate ... on his tiptoes." Lindahl also writes that "Mr.
Chase made it quite clear that he was the producer and that
everything would be exactly as he said. I believe that is what they
achieved." To which, the now-awed author can only reply: Duh
duh duh. duh duh.
2L16